A Mass Effect Carol
by bluekrishna
Summary: Written for the Aria's Afterlife Forum: Christmas Crossover Challenge. A Christmas Carol Mass Effect-style. Bit of angst, lots of feels. How does Shepard deal with a galaxy that no longer needs saving? Remorse and bitterness rage as he tries to live with himself and his decisions on the Crucible. What happens when three ghosts come calling to save HIM for once? Can they?
1. Chapter 1

_This used to mean something to me, _thought the veteran as he fingered the six points of the slim piece of metal lying in the bowl of his palm. His thumb passed over the embossed words in the bronze. They said, 'Cmdr. Shepard', in neat little block letters. He tried to recall that feeling, the pride, the way the praise of his men had uplifted him. Nothing. Not even an echo.

The Star of Terra twinkled in his hand and it might as well be some trash bit of tin he'd picked up off the street for all he actually cared.

"Captain, we're docking at the Citadel now." Joker's voice, devoid of the humor that had so defined the pilot in Shepard's memory.

"Good. I'm coming down." Shepard opened the drawer of his nightstand and tossed the Star back in there with all the other tokens of esteem, some invented just for him after the Reapers fell. He stood and strode to his locker, strapping on the familiar care-worn armor, holstering his favored M-7 Lancer.

Then, he made his way down to the forward airlock, where Garrus, similarly attired, waited. The turian gave him a thumbs-up and leaned back to yell to Joker, "Open her up."

The outer doors hissed open, buffeting Shepard with the strange and heady brew that was the atmosphere on the giant space station. As he ran along with Garrus in his wake, he wondered for the nth time, what exactly flavored the air. Alien sweat? Surely the CO2-scrubbers would take care of that. Almost spicy, with a faint ozone undertone.

The duo plopped into a cab. Shepard spoke to the automated aircar, "Presidium. Council chamber."

The vehicle rose and flew toward the big tower in the center of the station. Garrus fidgeted in the seat next to him, finally breaking the tense silence, "John, listen, I-"

"I hope the Council has a better job for us this time. I'm getting tired of snuffing drug runners." Shepard fought down a bubble of something like panic as he interrupted whatever Garrus had been about to say. He threw an engaging grin the turian's way.

Garrus sighed in resignation and drawled, "Yeah. They run like pyjaks when they see you coming. I'm surprised their shoes don't squeak from the bladder-releasing terror."

Shepard forced a laugh out of a grin that felt increasingly unnatural, more like a grimace as it pulled at his skin. "We'll get some real action this time, I just know it." Then he turned to face the window, shutting down the conversation to keep it from circling back to whatever his most trusted friend had wanted to talk to him about. He heard Garrus sigh again and settle back into his own seat.

He left Garrus to mingle downstairs as he headed up to see the new council. The door of the elevator opened and there stood Fleet Admiral Hackett, his craggy features looking especially haggard now there was no war on to occupy him. One corner of his lips drew up, puckering his scars. "Shepard."

"Admiral." Shepard stepped out of the lift. The two men stood shoulder to shoulder and gazed around the rebuilt seat of all galactic power. Shepard looked for differences and found few.

"Still fighting the good fight?"

"Still fighting." Shepard shrugged.

"So I hear. You've done little else since getting yourself released from recovery." The admiral scratched the stubble on his cheek and eyed Shepard askance. "A recovery that should have gone on for at least two more years, followed by a psych eval."

"You know me, I'm not happy unless I'm doing something."

"Still, your authority as a Spectre shouldn't be used like that."

"What good is authority if you don't use it once in a while." Shepard frowned and felt a wisp of anger curl in his guts. He turned to Hackett.

Who couldn't seem to shut his ever-loving mouth. "You owe it to your crew t-"

"No disrespect meant, admiral, but what I do with my authority isn't under Alliance jurisdiction _or _oversight." Threat, not overt, laced his words. "The Normandy and her crew are part of the joint military fleet now."

Taken aback, Hackett leaned away from him. Shepard watched a thousand angry retorts float around in the man's eyes before the admiral replied, in a calm voice, "You're right. Council authority supercedes mine. Take a little advice, _Captain _Shepard. Step back and take a breath. Before you look in the mirror one day and see a man you can't live with."

Bitterness filled Shepard as they parted ways. Perhaps he shouldn't have gone back to the Alliance after the Collector Base. Maybe he should have let them all twist in the breeze. He entertained thoughts of what might have happened then as he strode up the gangplank to meet the galaxy's newest batch of idiot leaders.

Five of them now. The classic three, plus a human and a krogan. The human councilor, Braca, a man who might be shorter and a bit fatter, but still somehow came off as 'Udina'-shaped, turned to meet him. An oily smile lit his porcine features. "Ah. Here he is now. Hero of the hour."

Tevos bowed to him in deep respect, as did Sparatus. The salarian councilor only nodded, reflecting the disapproval his race still harbored toward the Spectre for curing the genophage. Pakrag, the krogan, _grinned _at him, a wide leer that could mean 'Hey, buddy, pal, old friend o'mine' or 'You wanna take this outside?'

Shepard bowed at the waist to all of them and then met every eye as he straightened. "Excellencies, you summoned me?"

Sparatus cleared his throat and said, "Yes. As you well know, in the aftermath of the Reaper War, pirates took over all the shipping lanes and many colonies seceded with the help of mercenary armies-"

"What? Pirates? _Again?"_ Disappointment displaced the earlier bitterness at his core.

"Let me finish, Spectre," The turian grumbled, "As I was saying, mercs and pirates which we've finally gotten down to manageable numbers thanks to you and your efforts. Then, when six crime syndicates rose up and tried to take over all the drug trade out in the Attican Traverse, we had you go in there guns blazing to show them we wouldn't tolerate it."

_Get to the fucking point, you long-winded fuck, _thought Shepard, grinding his teeth to keep from showing any of it on his face.

"You're boring the shit out of him, Sparatus. And me. Hurry it up." Pakrag growled, with a little twirling gesture of one thick finger.

The turian councilor shot him a glare full of venom. "Do not undermine my authority in this place, Pak-rag!"

"How many times am I gonna hafta say it? It's Puh-KRAG!" The krogan shouted it, so it rebounded off all the synth-steel walls around them. Pakrag looked around in proud satisfaction. "I'm never gonna get tired of that."

Tevos, stepping in before it became a fistfight, gestured for silence. "Shepard, after your long service to the galaxy, it is our pleasure to inform you that we finally have peace. A thing we did not believe would happen in our lifetimes."

Shepard's jaw dropped and he stuttered, "A-are you saying . . . what I think you're saying?"

The salarian smiled a wide and indulgent smile with the tiniest hint of cruelty in it. "We are saying that you are free to retire with full honors."

"Retire?" There was that panic again. It never strayed far from his wakened mind. His jaw snapped shut on voicing it. Instead, he engaged them as a tactician would when presented with a stubborn dilemma. "You said 'free to', you're not_ forcing_ me to retire? Did you bring me all the way here to _fire _me?"

They sputtered and backpedaled. Tevos' hands flittered as she replied, "No, no, we would never think to-"

"Not as such. Not someone as honored-" Sparatus huffed.

"It would be the worst PR-" finished Braca, with a genuflecting wave and frozen grin of panic.

Shepard's voice rolled out of him, low and cold, "Give me a job. Any job."

The councilors looked around at each other in puzzlement.

John sighed in exasperation. "There has to be something. There's _always _something."

"Only minor matters. Nothing we don't already have other agents taking care of," Nyort, now he recalled the new salarian councilor's name, said.

Braca, the snide bastard, cleared his throat. Every eye turned to him. "Well, there is one thing."

"What?" Shepard didn't even bother with an honorific.

"We've been meaning to send a goodwill delegation to all the council worlds. Embassadors. Diplomats. For a meet and greet. Lots of handshaking and parades and official dinners . . .."

With every word, his guts sunk just a little lower, as did his spirit. Shepard swallowed to try to moisten a suddenly parched throat. "Of-official dinners . . .."

"Yes and it would be perfect to have Captain Shepard there. The universally loved first human Spectre. The savior of the gala-"

He couldn't bear to hear any more, not without drawing and firing on all of these 'august' and 'wise' leaders. He stalled the words with a raised hand. "It doesn't sound like something I'm qualified for. Look at me. I'm a soldier. Always have been."

"A soldier in a time where there is no great war." Sparatus spread his hands wide. "Needs must. It's either this or retirement. Do you accept this assignment?"

At that pronouncement, which hit him between the eyes like a death sentence, Shepard closed his eyes and shrunk in on himself. After a long moment, he nodded. Smiles all around met his acceptance. All except for Pakrag, who only shook his head with something like pity.

A trophy. They wanted a trophy to parade around. He could picture it already. All shiny braid and useless ceremonial armor, if any. He rasped, "And the Normandy?"

"We'll find a new commander for her, don't you worry. We'll take good care of her." Nyort said.

Shepard never felt so . . . beaten. Not even when he'd been shown the truth on the Crucible. That to stop a war, he had to lose a battle just as important.


	2. Chapter 2

He could just see Garrus where the turian lounged against a pillar outside the Presidium Tower. Shepard's froze, then, just inside the glass doors. His hand gripped the handle loosely, its chore forgotten.

For the first time in his life, he wanted to run. Actually felt his leg muscles bunch somewhere below his suddenly racing heart. The various parts of his body felt disconnected from each other for a second. Vertigo made everything seem to tip a little to one side.

As if the turian could hear that thudding human heart, Garrus turned and spotted him. The sniper waved, faltering when Shepard failed to return it.

Shepard almost bolted. He used all his willpower to shove that hated terror away and plaster a huge, fake smile onto his face. He pushed through the door to confront the nightmare that was suddenly his life. He swept past Garrus in a saunter full of feigned confidence and urgency.

The turian dropped into step beside him, tall and comforting there at Shepard's right, a blue and grey blur in his periphery. Garrus spoke, a smirk curling around his tone, "Must be one hell of a job."

"Oh, yeah. Top priority escort mission." As he said these words, Shepard felt bile collect in his gullet. "Something a little different than the usual, which suits me just fine."

"Huh. 'Escort mission?' Where?"

"Everywhere, big guy! All the capital worlds. Important to the stability of the galaxy, sort of thing. _Vital." _He struggled not to spit that last word.

"Need Shepard to swoop in and save the day again, huh? Really, you should charge by the hour." Garrus chuffed at his own joke. They neared the elevator to the Commons. The turian hit the button. As they stepped inside the lift, Garrus said, "Who are we escorting?"

Shepard shot him a sly wink. "Only the entire council. Plus their entourages."

Garrus flicked a confused mandible. "But I thought those assholes only ride on the Ascension."

"And so will we, my friend. Cruisin' in style." Shepard felt the cracks on the edge of his mask widen, spiraling out of control. No way the turian couldn't see them. They must be like the goddamn Grand Canyon.

Sharp as ever, the sniper shifted back and cocked his hip. Those blue eyes, alien in aspect, but all too human in intent, pinned Shepard under their piercing regard. "What's going on, John? No way do they need _you_ to babysit the_ Ascension_ and its honor guard of frigates and destroyers. That's not how we operate. It's like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole."

There was that feeling again. That insane urge to flee, to just run and run until his heart explodes. Nowhere to go in this tiny box. And just outside of his closed eyelids, a friend, the only friend left, waited for answers. Dragging forward what little dignity he had left, Shepard crossed his arms. It did little to steady him, but it did keep him from flying apart. In slow and halting speech, he laid out what was to become of him.

When he finished, Garrus said, "Shit."

"I know, right? But hey, I just gotta hold on until something comes along. Then we'll be aces."

"Shepard-"

"Then we could go to Omega."

"John-" A warning lay under those dulcet dual-tones.

But Shepard barrelled on, "-There's always someone in need of a good kicking there-"

"John!" Garrus stopped him from interrupting again with a hand to the shoulder. It squeezed all the fight out of him, though he couldn't feel more than the barest pressure from the flexing fingers between pauldron and breastplate. "You know I haven't been home since you called me to come pick you up a year ago from Earth. Since then, it's been one engagement after another. Always moving. Always busy. I didn't even go to my father's funeral."

Silent now, Shepard could only listen with eyes shut firmly against the inevitable. Would that it was just as easy to shut his ears.

"I kept trying to bring it up, but there's something I need to go do on Palaven. My sister, Solana, you remember her?" At his nod, Garrus continued, "It's her son's Naming Day. I want to be there and I-I want _you_ to be there, too. It's kind of important."

The man in the box with the turian and his coaxing words shook his head, an almost violent wrenching from side to side. "No, we're committed. This is important, too. We can't just-"

"John, it's my nephew-"

"She'll have more kids! Go to the next one!" As soon as the words flew out into the ether, John wished he could yank them back._ Never_ had Garrus turned such a look of utter reproach on him. Hard to stomach and he could only shake as he played the coup de grace. "They took her away from me, Garrus."

A hot stab of guilt tried to disembowel him as he watched Garrus crumple before his bluff. Shepard loved the Normandy, but it wasn't the reason he clung to his last remaining friend. It didn't birth the growing, howling maw of fear in him. Garrus looked away and whispered, "Okay."

"I need you-"

"I said okay." A rare spark of anger filled Garrus' voice as his gaze swung back around. "But _only _until the first drop, then I'll hitch a ride out to Palaven. I should be able to iron out your logistics by then. Hopefully, I'll make it in time." The elevator opened on the commerce district. Garrus stepped out to do the shopping he'd said days before that he would do when they next docked at the Citadel.

_A gift for his sister, _John recalled belatedly, but he reached out anyway, toward Garrus' retreating back. _Don't go . . .._

Garrus turned as the doors started their slow slide shut. Something of what Shepard felt must have shown on his face, because the turian cocked his head and said with a half-smile, "What? I'll come back."

_No, you won't. _With the doors closed, John leaned into the wall, tucking his face against it and his shoulder. _None of the others did._

* * *

His last night on the Normandy.

His last night to be lulled to sleep by her gentle noises. The light of stars drifting by filled his dreams most nights with surreal colors shifting from one end of the spectrum to the other.

Shepard lay in profound torpor, not quite in the deep end yet, but feeling the weight of sleep paralysis burden his limbs. It was in this perfect stillness that he heard a voice in the dark.

"Shepard." Just a whisper, but he heard it well. Something familiar, someone that used to mean hope to him.

"Yes," he mumbled, somehow sure that this fancy that reached out of dreams wanted a conversation, "I'm here."

"Shepard, you are not alone."

_Of course not. Someone's talking to me, someone who died for my damn choices. _"EDI, is that you?"

"Yes, Shepard. I have come to talk to you about why you're so afraid."

That, he turned away from. He no more wanted to unearth those particular demons than poke out his own eye. "No."

"Yes. And I have come to talk about what you will do because of that fear."

" 'm not gonna do anything. Just gotta . . . hold on."

"But you will and everyone will suffer."

He felt a frown pull his brows together. "If you're EDI, then prove it."

"You once asked me if I was going to get a vagina installed for Joker and I replied that I-"

"-that you'd look into it with your next oil change." He pushed a dry chuckle out of his throat, though the act felt like wading through heavy atmo, slow and difficult. "It is you." Then he frowned again and a whimper rose out from between clenched teeth. "EDI. Oh, EDI, I-I'm so sorry. Th-the Crucible-"

"Shh, shh. It is okay, Shepard. I found out that I have a soul. And life goes on."

He grunted with a touch of petulance, "No, it doesn't. It just goes round and round in a circle. Same . . . stupid shit."

"Shepard, something is going to happen. Very soon. Three . . . people are going to visit you."

"Who?" John tried to pry his eyes open, but just couldn't seem to manage it. A blue glow filtered through his lids and he felt his sleeping body begin to waken.

"You know them well. And they are going to show you some things, Shepard. And then you will have to make a choice." Her voice got fainter.

His arms and legs began to stir. "What choice?"

Her reply, so faint and wispy, got lost amid the Normandy's regular thrumming, the heartbeat of her engines.

"EDI, what choice?" He sat bolt upright in bed, eyes flying open to take in his very empty quarters. The loudness of his own voice startled him and he looked around in bafflement. Scrubbing his face with one hand, he checked the chronometer. Three hours til reveille. Shepard grimaced and took a sip of the glass of water by his bed.

Sighing, he lay back down. Did he dream the whole thing? He must have. Yet it felt . . . real. Surreal. He decided to dismiss it for fantasy. EDI wouldn't come visit him from the great beyond even if she'd somehow ended up there. She had a soul? Unlikely. And yet, hadn't he felt she had a . . . something anyway whenever they spoke? Some part of her that seemed to be reaching out.

He tried to shake it all off. As the darkness once again claimed his awareness, her words, whether real or imagined, haunted him. '_A choice . . .. A choice . . ..'_


	3. Chapter 3

Bored. Boring. Boredom.

Shepard swished a glass of champagne just to watch the bubbles rise and burst as the over-stuffed, over-dressed peacocks pranced around him. With his other hand, he toyed with the joke of a sidearm they'd given him as the only weapon acceptable among these beings of authority. He didn't trust it to shoot through soft butter.

He felt so out of place that it disoriented him. At least Garrus could swagger with the best of them. His height made him a natural beacon to gravitate around. Though from the look in his eye, he seemed just as bored as Shepard. And twice as frustrated.

Three days on the Ascension and he already hated it. Hated the crowds of uppity politicians. Hated that he hadn't put his fist through someone's face in nearly a week. Hated how _nice _everyone here was on the outside and how venomous they were on the inside. Like a lily floating on pond scum.

_This _is why he saved the galaxy?

So these snide snake-oil salesmen could keep wheeling and dealing and playing with your average joes' lives? Already, he'd had to restrain himself from choking the volus embassador to Thessia. The short fat fuck had spent the better part of dinner gloating about how his trade tariff policies shut down all the shipping companies in a single district except for the one lining his pockets with stolen credits.

Shepard wondered if that Parasini woman might be interested in the info. Then he wondered if she'd lived through the war. A sobering thought.

A waving hand grabbed his attention. He felt a lemon-twist of disdain sour his mood when he realized it seemed to be attached to Braca. Sighing, he prepared himself to play the dancing monkey and wandered over to the councilor's group.

"Ah, Captain Shepard, tell us again how you accessed the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime."

Only by biting the inside of his cheek did Shepard keep his eyes from rolling. He had a mad flash of an image then of his eyes rolling so violently that they popped out of his skull and bounced over into the canapes. Then the screaming would start. He stifled an inappropriate laugh and did as Braca asked. He kept it short and without his usual flair for storytelling. Maybe they'd get the hint and leave him alone.

Leaving his audience thoroughly unsatisfied, Shepard made his way over to where Garrus had posted up near the booze. A wry smile twisted his mouth as he looked upon bottles and bottles of what might have been a welcome respite if his super-metabolism didn't make getting drunk impossible. He hadn't been properly wasted since he'd died. _The first time, _he amended with a nod.

"Want a mixer?" Garrus drawled, flipping a bottle into the air and catching it deftly.

"Bartending now? I thought your job was just standing there and looking pretty."

"I look pretty regardless, so might as well make myself useful."

"Know how to make a harvey wall-banger? No? How bout a tequila sunrise?" Shepard snorted. "Ah, you know what, nevermind. Knowing how pissed you are at me, you'd probably put something dextro in there and kill me."

"Naw, it wouldn't _kill _you, per se," demurred Garrus, "Just make you wish you were dead."

"Comforting."

A long and awkward silence fell between the men. A silence that broke when Garrus said, "Thessia's tomorrow. First stop."

"Yeah." And didn't that just gnaw at him. Shepard felt more than a whisper of anger at Garrus for leaving him alone among these vipers, _he_ who was supposed to have his back no matter what. Then shame flooded him for having kept Garrus close for so long.

Garrus looked at him with a touching earnestness. "Please, come with me, John."

Shepard didn't reply, just studied his nails, too long and too clean. Words, ways that he could keep Garrus at his side rose up and clustered in his throat behind the dam of his tongue. He would _not _speak them. He promised himself he wouldn't. He allowed only this, a cold and emotionless, "And retire? I don't think so."

Silence dragged on and on then, the air between the pair filling up with all the things neither would say. Shepard broke it this time with a grumbled, "I'm going to bed."

Garrus called after him, "I'm leaving as soon as we get there. Aft hatch. 0800 hours!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll come see you off." No, he wouldn't.

"If you need to use the bathroom around the dead of night like you always do, don't use the head near your cabin! Security says it's buggy! Go to the _port_ head!"

Shepard hunched his shoulders, feeling a bit embarrassed that everyone heard that. He waved over his shoulder. "Thanks, _mom."_

He didn't even bother to undress as he pitched into bed, resisting the urge to kick his feet like a child. The last one was leaving him and it was all he could do not to scream. Or stomp back into that party and demand Garrus stay for the whole 'mission.' Use every little thing he knew about the turian to make him stay. He had no idea such ugly and petty things lay within him. Shepard felt disgusted with himself.

If only . . . no, the choices sucked. All of them. He wondered if he only picked the one because breaking stuff lay well within his comfort zone.

Curling into a fetal ball, Shepard willed himself into oblivion. It took forever without the Normandy's rhythms to rock him into senselessness, but eventually, it paid off and he knew no more. Thought no more.

* * *

_God, I need to piss,_ the coherent thought hit him with an odd clarity, though it came too late. He was already moving that way, taking one unsteady step after another. His gun in one hand. Funny, he didn't even remember picking it up. Old habits die hard. He must have also got naked sometime in the night because he found himself clad only in his regulation boxers.

Yawning a jaw-cracking yawn, Shepard wandered the empty corridors of the Ascension, growing increasingly more anxious to find a bathroom. Yet, he seemed to have gotten lost as well. "Fuck. Every time."

He came upon a door marked 'males' and rumbled a sleepy, "Ah-ha! Now we're getting somewhere."

But when he passed his hand over the center of the lock, it buzzed at him and refused to open. He frowned and blinked to clear away the fog. The lock glared back in shifting reds. Not just locked, but _locked _locked, then. Encoded. Vaguely, he remembered Garrus saying something about an out-of-order bathroom. This must be it. "Zigged when I shoulda zagged. Ah, well, fuck it."

Using his omnitool, he hacked the lock. _Even if the urinal's busted, I can always pee in the sink._

Stumbling into the small restroom with its two stalls and seven urinals of different heights and types, Shepard peered around in owlish curiosity. "Doesn't look broke."

Not spotting a 'human' facility for pissing, he headed to a stall and found the equipment there recognizable enough. He sat with a sigh after dropping his boxers around his calves. The cuntish little pistol he'd been issued, he put on the t.p. dispenser. Or what he hoped was a t.p. dispenser. Glad he didn't have to do the other thing, he dropped his chin into his palm as he did his business.

Sheer relief made him close his eyes. Some time later, he jerked awake at the sound of footsteps entering the bathroom. Something about the way they walked put him on high alert instantly. And when they started talking, he really started to pay attention.

"Set the timer for 300 seconds from the top of the hour. That should give us plenty of time to get into position," crooned a voice he recognized as belonging to a drell.

"What about the other ships?" Also a drell. Come to think of it, Shepard remembered seeing quite a few drell with the hanar delegation. Mostly servicers and foot-men, or . . . _hand_-men, as the case may be.

"We're going to draw their attention sooner or later anyway. It's only important we seize control of the Ascension."

Shepard crept down onto his hands and knees so he could look at the conspirators from under the stall's door. Yep, two drell, decked out all paramilitary, which for them meant slick leather coats. How he envied that.

He could see small devices being assembled. Probably bombs. Shepard grinned as he saw they'd set aside their rifles to fiddle with the gizmos. He took stock. No armor, shields or medi-gel. Item one: Toy popgun that his bosses thought could actually kill something. Item two: Sleepwear. Not exactly effective for anything but keeping one's dangly bits from showing. Item three: One frustrated half-mad Spectre itching for a fight.

Weighing the pros and cons of assaulting these two asses made him realize that he didn't really care if he could take them. It was going to happen. He'd deal with the consequences later.

Lucky for him, he picked the far stall. The two drell faced the entrance in case any threat came from there. Using the stealth he'd learned from watching one of their kind, he shimmied under the door, making nary a sound. Grinning like a maniac, he rose above them, unstoppable as a tsunami. In seconds, even though he had naught but one tiny gun and his boxers, he knelt on the ground with his knee on one drell's throat and the other sucking on his pistol's barrel. He growled through clenched teeth, "So. What are you kids planning, hmm? Little mutiny? Little boom-boom, no more Ascension?"

The one under his knee gasped and flailed. He let off just a hair so the bastard could breathe. Then he took his gun out of the other one's mouth so he could speak. That one said through bloody lips, "No! Hostages! Hostages!"

"Clarify. You have eight seconds."

"Seize council until they force hanar to nullify all drell contracts under the Compact. Slavery abolished." Impressive. This one had brains. Shepard would wager that it only took four seconds to spit all that out.

"Why involve the council?"

"Only government with power enough to enforce an unprecedented edict without litigation." _It's like he rehearsed it._ Probably did.

The thrill started to fade and his blood demanded more. More! He felt a tide shifting somewhere inside him, urging him to do something . . . naughty, and while he saw several flaws in their plan, it couldn't exactly be called _unjust._

Perhaps they deserved their shot at the big money. And like providence agreed with him, his omnitool chimed the hour in tandem with theirs. Shepard dropped back on his haunches, freeing both his captives. "Three hundred seconds? I'll give you five hundred. Go make a difference."

The smart one helped his brother in arms to his feet and gathered their things. Then he turned back to Shepard. "What happens then?"

_Ooo, smart boy. _His grin turned savage. "Then I do a little hunting and you won't have succeeded."

They scrambled to get away from the madman in his boxers. Shepard whistled as he set the alarm on his omnitool for six hundred seconds. Give them a bit more time. The adrenaline surging through his system set him right. Aware and awake, he sauntered back to his cabin and strapped on the glitzy armor with all the bells on. He opened his footlocker and pulled out the Lancer, caressing it with one calloused hand. _Now this is a proper weapon._

Then he sat back on his bunk and smiled at nothing, listening to distant explosions, waiting for the beep, waiting for a taste of the old life. The good life. The one that didn't leave any room to think.

* * *

Taking the ship back provided more challenge than he would have guessed. He'd stopped in to see if Garrus wanted to come along, but found the turian's cabin empty. Maybe he'd left already. Shepard pushed down the lump in his throat with a dry swallow. "Fine! More for me."

This group of insurgents did a pretty good job tying up loose ends. They had all of security locked into their own rooms, triple encoded. They'd disabled all the LOKI mechs, as well as the stationary gun turrets that guarded every level's entrances. It looked like they had Jabba's pleasure barge on lockdown. But, they hadn't taken _him _into account. Odd that they didn't know he was on board. He should have been the first one silenced, but hell, maybe they were new to this sort of thing.

So he took out one group at a time. The fine spray of blood hitting him in the face felt as welcome as a cool breeze on a hot day. He reveled in it. Even went so far as to punch one to death just to feel the flesh give under his fists and hear the meaty thwack of each impact.

He found the last group holed up in the hanar ambassador's suite. Having taken two of the councilors hostage, they'd retreated from his advance to a more familiar location. So, now he stood at another locked door, weighing options. Instinct made him swing to the right, Lancer up and ready, but the figure that strolled around the far bend grinned at him, a wide and familiar krogan grin above twin sub machine guns. They both lowered their weapons at the same time.

Shepard waited for the krogan to sidle up next to him before commenting with casual interest, "Pakrag, nice of you to join the party."

"Captain. They locked me in my room, but I just kicked it down."

"Effective."

"So, who are they?"

"Freedom fighters. You know, '_terrorists'._ At least, that's what we call them from this side of the debate." Shepard let his rifle dangle so he could do the quoties.

"Looked like they were all drell. Lemme guess, they got a beef with the Primacy."

"Bingo." He sucked at his teeth as he pulled up the decryption key on his omnitool. Might as well get started on the lock. "They have Nyort and Braca in there."

"Figures they'd go after the weak ones." Pakrag rumbled a low laugh. "Though it would have been funny to see the ones who went after Tevos get turned into paste. She's always prepared for assassins."

"Sexy." The lock turned green and they both jumped to the side to frame the doorway as it opened. As he'd predicted, gunfire flew through the open portal to pepper the wall opposite. When it paused, he ventured a quick glance. Then he said to Pakrag, "Six on the left. Eight on the right. Leader behind some upturned tables, probably has a hostage in front of him. Lots of dead hanar."

The krogan's face stretched into an even wider grin. "Easy. Plan?"

Shepard shrugged. "Storm the place?"

"I like it, don't get me wrong, but wouldn't it be easier to take out the leader, then broker a surrender?"

"Careful, you're turning into a politician. I agree that it_ would _be easier, but I left my sniper in my other jacket."

"Alright, then. I guess I'll be the meat shield."

"And I'll flank one side or another on the way in after you." He itched to be at it already.

"What about the hostages?" Pakrag turned an orange eye on him.

He shrugged. "What _about _the hostages?"

Shepard could tell that such cold indifference unsettled even the krogan, especially coming from Shepard. He felt not one ounce of caring, though. That probably should alarm him, but no matter. Shepard called out to the drell, "Hey, guys, you know all your little pals are dead. This coup is over."

Hissed conversation on their end, heated and fearful. Then a voice rose above the others, "No! It'll never be over until the Primacy recognizes our legi-"

At a jerk of his head, Pakrag charged into the room, Shepard at his heels. Panicked, the opposition lost the initiative and scattered before his bulk. Their rounds, what few actually hit, shattered upon the krogan's shields. Shepard rolled to one side while they remained distracted and started a slow advance around the edges, picking off targets left and right. By the time they even noticed him, he'd decimated them. Pakrag was no slouch either.

Soon only the leader remained and surprise, it was smart boy. Not so smart. If he'd been smart, the drell would have used the extra time Shepard had given him to gather his people and run. Shepard found himself so very glad smart boy had stuck around.

Pakrag and he stood shoulder to shoulder, facing smart boy and his human shield. Poor Braca, all sweat and desperation. He begged for Shepard to save him with his eyes. The drell snarled, "Stay back! I'll kill him. I swear I'll kill him if you come any closer."

Lancer trained on where drell hearts were supposed to be, Shepard took a deliberate step forward. Smart boy put the end of his pistol back to Braca's head.

"You don't think I'll do it? I will kill this human!"

"Boy, it doesn't matter. There's no scenario where you come out on top here. You've killed too many. Instead of taking this fight to your little backwater where you might have had a shot, you brought it here. Did you really think involving the entire galaxy in your battle was such a good idea? We have so many more guns." He could see panic in the drell's eyes take hold. "You do know who I am, don't you?"

Smart boy swallowed. "C-Commander Shepard."

The tableau froze for far too long in Shepard's estimation. In exasperation, he said to the boy's hostage, "Sorry, Braca."

Then he squeezed the trigger. The bullet he loosed tore through the right side of Braca's chest and hammered right into smart boy's chest. They fell away from each other. Shepard jerked a thumb at the human councilor, signaling for Pakrag to take care of it. Surely the titan had some medi-gel on his person.

John advanced on the fallen terrorist. The boy's huge, dark eyes followed him. He stood over the drell and took careful aim. A bloody hand with fused middle digits grasped at his boot weakly. Smart boy's bloody lips opened as he rasped, "We only-only wanted . . . freedom. M-mercy . . .."

"Sorry, kid. I'm all out of mercy." A single bullet finished the job. Shepard let the old thrill take him. Mission complete. He closed his eyes to enjoy it fully.

Then he heard a beeping. Using the end of his rifle, he pulled the boy's coat away from his side. And what he saw there made his mouth go bone-dry. _A dead-man switch! _To those who survived, he shouted, "Bomb!"

Then all was light and heat and sound. That carried on for a lot longer than he expected a single bomb to. His head collided with something solid. It seemed to shake him loose of his body and on a tide of growing detachment, he floated away.


	4. Chapter 4

Sometime later, he felt a presence by his cot, though when he first opened his eyes, only a blurry shape in the semi-gloom met his curiosity.

The pink oval of its face flexed into what he kind of hoped was a smile. It spoke, "Hey, Skip."

A memory stirred. Timbre, inflection, tone, they all added up to equal only one being. Plus, she called him 'Skip'. "Ash?"

"Right on the money. Good to see time hasn't addled your brain. Well, not much anyway."

"Did I die?"

"Nearly." She laughed. He felt that laugh yank at all the bits of him that missed her. "Don't you know terrorists always have a contingency plan?"

"Yeah, well. What'd I lose anyway?" He struggled to sit up and assess himself now that his vision cleared. His left side didn't seem to want to cooperate. In fact, past the shoulder, he lacked any sign of an arm. "What? The left one again?"

"That's the third one you've wasted so far."

"Good thing I bought the warranty." He blinked up at her, sitting there like she hadn't been blasted to hell on distant Virmire. "You look good."

"Thanks, Skipper." Ashley watched him with a warm smile on her face. Her eyes gleamed too bright in the dark, otherworldly in aspect. When he reached out with a hand, she grasped it, tight and warm. He swallowed back the sudden welling of feeling that rose in him.

"I missed you, Ash. So much. I didn't-"

"You made the hard choice, Skip. Stronger men have balked when faced with the same decision." She brought his hand to her cheek. He stroked it with his thumb, wondering at how solid she felt. "I've come to show you something."

Alarm filled him. "Does this have anything to do with EDI visiting me the other night?"

"Yes."

"What if I don't want to see?"

"I can't make you see if you don't want to." She leaned over the bed, filling his whole field of vision with her shining eyes. "You trust me, don't you, Skip?"

"Of course."

"Come with me." She stood and tried to pull him with her.

He froze. "I-Ash, I don't-"

"Don't be afraid," she chided, a playful smile ghosting around her lips.

Finally, his feet got moving. First to swing off the side of the bed, then to push him upright. He felt a mild surprise for the complete lack of pain. Or maybe he was dreaming this whole thing. "Where are we going?"

"Your past." She palmed the lock to the Ascension's medbay's door, but instead of a hallway painted in serene blues, it opened on a blinding white light.

Digging in his heels, he tried to shout, "No!" But it only came out as a weak and tremulous plea for mercy.

"You must."

The hand holding his pulled with gentle insistence and he could no more deny it than fly. Stepping into that brilliance, he whimpered as a sensation flew over every nerve in his body. Tingling, pulling, up and down ceased to have meaning as he tumbled through and into . . . an alleyway. Crumbling brick lay under his hands, the side of a building he hadn't been aware of stumbling into.

It stank, wherever he was now. Smelled like rotten garbage and feces. He wrinkled his nose as he peered up and down the narrow corridor. A sudden dropping of his guts heralded the realization that he knew this place. This place had once meant home to him. A hand landed on his shoulder and he jumped, swinging around to see Ash still at his side.

Shouting drew both of their attention upwards, to the fire escapes that still clung to the ancient brownstone even in this modern age. A small boy leapt from landing to landing, with the lazy hipshot grace of the young. A look of fear stamped on his face. On his heels, a large hairy man chased, shouting obscenities, swinging a belt over his head, promising the boy pain neverending as soon as he caught him.

"That's me!" Shepard pointed at the boy, who jumped the last few floors into a dumpster.

"_You fucking abortion!_ Stealing from me! Don't you ever come back!" The boy's pursuer howled.

The pair watched the boy, no older than six, shoot past them and away. Shepard felt the urge to stop him, hold him, tell him that his mother's current client/boyfriend would soon leave as all the others did. "I only took half a can of spam."

Ash said, "You were hungry."

"I was always hungry."

"Didn't your mother ever feed you?"

Shepard sighed. He didn't like remembering those days. "When they shut down the last of the old fossil-fuel refineries and switched to the new tech, my mother was laid off. So were thousands of others. She . . . did what she had to. To survive."

"Whoring." She said this without rancor or judgement. A mere statement of fact. "And that man, is he your father?"

"God, I hope not, but it's not like I know for certain. Mom named me after my father, you see. 'John'. Her idea of a joke. She didn't know any more than I did." Shepard chuckled a sour little chuckle. "When she remembered to feed me those few times she wasn't all doped out on whatever bargain-basement drug she was currently in love with, she'd grouse about every bite. About how she was the way she was because of me. And when she got angry . . .."

He shuddered at the memory of her towering over him with that damn lighter in her hands. The way the fire reflected in her eyes became the very definition of hell to him.

Ash took his one hand and squeezed it. "It's a wonder you survived."

"Nine whole years. That's when I took my act on the road. Left for good."

The dead woman beside him waved her hand and the scenery went all runny. When it hardened again, they stood in a park. Snow blanketed the ground. Before them, there sat a boy on a bench, a little older, a lot angrier. Shepard remembered well what made him quit his 'loving' home. A client of his mother's got a little too friendly with him. At first, John accepted the little gifts and morsels of precious food with enthusiasm, but when the touching and petting became unbearable, he'd stopped accepting them. Then one night the man pinned him in a corner and-

He cut the memory off with a shake of his head. He turned his gaze back to the younger him. The boy stared straight through him with an intensity that confused him. "What am I looking at?" He turned to look as well.

"He's watching _them." _Ash pointed out a family making snow angels nearby. Three kids with their mom and dad. All had ridiculously happy smiles on their faces.

"I remember thinking that they wouldn't be doing that if they knew how many dog doings there were under there."

"What else do you remember?" Ash prompted, watching him with an expectant tilt of her head.

Shepard thought hard and watched the boy watching them. He felt a memory of longing tug at him. "I . . . wanted to join them. I envied them."

"Always the outsider looking in. Invisible. Disregarded._ Look_ at them. They were just as poor as you, but they had something in each other you'd never known in your whole short life." Ash sat next to the boy, who clearly didn't know of their presence. She reached out and brushed a dark curl over one ear. The boy swatted at what he probably thought was an insect. "Family."

"Family," echoed Shepard. He looked for the hole in his adult self and found what had filled it. "Then I found the gangs."

"And when you'd had enough of their conditional and often unsteady allegiances, when you'd been stabbed in the back once too often by the 'family' you'd made of them-"

"I joined the military."

"And there was the attachment you'd been starved of." With a magic wave of her hand, they transported through the highlights of his military career. The highs, the lows, the assaults, the last stands. That him seemed so happy to be surrounded on all sides by his fellow soldiers. "You gave them everything of yourself, down to the marrow and they loved you. And you, who had never felt such warmth, loved them so much in return. All of them."

The images grew bolder and more recent. One by one, his friends swept by, a smile of welcome on their faces, each one saying, "Shepard." He felt filled to the brim with love and hope and longing and fear, but it was shared among all of them. A dark time fell upon them all and while he despaired of ever finishing the daunting task of casting down the Reapers, he felt a fierce gladness that they stood with him. He never doubted them, ever, even when ideologies clashed and old hatreds came to the surface like a shallow cut will bring pus from a septic wound.

And he found love. Tali's face, unmasked, turned toward the him of the past in the light of Rannoch's two moons. He remembered thinking how her ethereal beauty smote him like a shotgun to the chest, no matter how often he saw it. In his periphery, he could just see Raan and a couple geth primes hashing out re-colonization strategies. Never had his heart soared as it had on that day. How he'd prayed then to the powers that be. _Just this one time, let it happen. Let it work. _

For in the success of what came of this one moment of peace, he could finally see the breaking of the cycle. Forever.

Then, the lights of his new family started winking out. Some left to fight their own demons. Others had already. . . died. For him. Like _her. _He turned eyes stinging with emotion to Ashley. She nodded in perfect and compassionate understanding. The flying glimpses into his life stilled on a scene he never wanted to remember, never wanted to relive.

A Shepard from not too long ago walked on unsteady legs along the wide surface of the Citadel's stigma-like center. The specter of a child stood near, speaking to him, cajoling him with choices that not a single one seemed a good idea. He remembered ruling out control and synthesis almost immediately. Shepard never wanted to have the kind of power that controlling a race of immortal squid-machines would endow him with. He wasn't strong enough. Or _good_ enough for that to turn out well.

And synthesis seemed far too complicated and over-reaching. Who was he to determine the future of all life from this point forward should be a hybridized one? On every planet. Everywhere. What was left of choice there?

That left destroying them all. Shepard could still feel how heavy the gun seemed then. He watched his younger self rage in shock when the Catalyst told him of the consequences. EDI gone. The geth, who Legion sacrificed his soul for, gone.

Broken, bleeding Shepard stumbled on legs present-Shepard knew to be shaking from more than just anger. The despair had nearly killed him then, as the memory of it struck him with a deep pain now. Shepard felt a tear slide down his cheek as his ragged husk of a younger self moved toward the right. The only decision he could make. The Catalyst must have been laughing on the inside. Though all the Reapers would die, the galaxy would lose. Maybe not that day, but someday it would all start again, untempered by a compassionate AI's guidance or the proven possibility of peaceful coexistence.

He held his breath as the final shots rang out. The chaos that ensued did not touch them. Ash came up beside him and he leaned on her, scrubbing his cheek to wipe the moisture away. "So I remembered it, so it was done. What the hell does me watching it all again change?"

She did that waving thing again and they stood in a sea of rubble. Snow drifted down from the sky to gather on the fallen Citadel. From under one large chunk, Shepard heard a chuffing laugh. He swallowed hard. "No. I don't want to remember this part either. Can't we just skip it?"

Ash shook her head in solemn pity. "No, we cannot. This is where the fear began. You must see it."

"Since when do you get off giving _me _orders, huh, _Gunnery Chief_?" He loomed over her. "EDI said the fear leads to me doing something. What do I do, Ash? What terrible thing do I do?"

"I am only here to show you the past. The rest is up to the others." Her tranquility started to rankle him.

"The others? Yeah? Who? Legion? Mordin? My third-grade math teacher? Who?" A scrabbling noise drew his eyes back to the fallen masonry and the person he knew who lay trapped under it. "God, this is sick. It's cruel. Maybe I _am_ dead and this_ is_ hell!"

Shepard sprinted to the stone and threw his weight against it, tried to shift it with his one arm and what leverage he could get. He nearly bit his tongue in two when a wispy little off-key singsong dribbled out of the tiny opening at its base. A couple bruised and bent fingers emerged to catch snow on their fingertips. He shot a glare at Ash. "Help me!"

"You can't change what happened."

"You don't understand! I'm dying under there!"

"Yes."

"N-no, I mean, I'm-I'm-" Terror made his thoughts fly away like little birds. Shepard clawed at his face and tried not to remember the hopelessness. The helplessness. The terrible burden that should have lightened, but only got heavier once he'd realized he was still alive. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming the next words. "I'm not just dying under there, I-I'm . . . _disappearing!_ Bits of me breaking off and just swirling away into the big nothing. I need-I need-"

Suddenly it felt as though he were back in that moment, those long days trapped under that immovable bit of stone and metal, pinned by its mass. How every breath lit a fire in his lungs. How he'd cursed his implants for forcing him to stay alive by metabolizing the rest of his flesh. His body was eating itself. Lost, in the dark, crying out like a child for mercy, for an end. A slim crack of light his only window on a world he'd never expected to see again.

Where were the others? Were they safe? Did they think he died? Were they even looking for him? Didn't they know how alone he was? Weren't they supposed to _care_?

How he'd shouted their names for hours on end, as much as his crushed ribcage would allow.

"Skip." Ash put her arms around him and feeling her, he threw himself into the embrace with a sharp cry, grabbing at the cloth of the back of her shirt with the one hand left to him, the same one that had sought water in the snow falling from the sky. "What do you need, Skip?"

'Why didn't they come? I waited and waited. Why didn't they come?" He sobbed into her shoulder.

"They did come. Remember?" Ash pulled his forehead to hers and looked into his eyes, forcing a rapport, though his just kept wanting to dart and seek a way out. "Your family came for you."

Shepard nodded tentatively, his mind still reeling from the memory he'd tried to kill, or at least leave in that dark crevice under that rubble. He'd been near catatonic by the time the rescue team found him. Weeks until he learned to speak again. Months until the new arm and leg stopped itching. Nearly a year passed since they'd pulled him out of that hole and it took him almost that long to truly leave it. When he did find a way to relieve the constant fear, he remembered feeling happy, for the solution seemed easy. Keep busy. Don't think. Hold on.

He blinked and realized they'd gone somewhere else. His relief was short-lived as he recognized the 'when' they'd traveled to. He clung to Ash. "No more, please."

"Just this last vision. Then my task is complete."

The Shepard of two years prior sat in his bunk and fiddled with a mod. He cursed as the screwdriver in his new hand slipped and scored a deep line in the black paint. John watched himself whistle a happy tune out of a face that still showed scars from his recent trauma. The door swished open to admit Tali, who stepped in with an air of uncertainty. The past him barely paused in his work. She sat in a chair at his bedside, as she had throughout his long recovery and said, "Shepard."

"Oh, hey, Tali. How was dinner?"

"It would have been better if you'd come with me. You should get out of this stuffy room more often."

"You know I hate it when they stare."

"They're just curious." Tali waved one graceful hand. Present-Shepard felt his heart thud to see her so near. He'd forgotten the small things, how she sat so neatly balanced with hands folded in her lap primly, how she could say so much with a nod or tilt of her masked and hooded head. Her mystery had been one he'd relished solving.

"Hey, check it out." Past-Shepard handed Tali the mod he'd been working on. "I adjusted it so the heat exchange wouldn't skew the sight after every few overheats."

"Uh, nice, I guess?" She turned it this way and that. "Won't this make it weigh more?"

"Meh, it might. But think of the damage I'll do now that I won't have to stop every few minutes and re-calibrate." His past self did a passable imitation of Garrus' voice for that last word, minus the buzzing subharmonics.

"Shepard, I don't think there's any large predators on Rannoch that need a rifle to scare them off. Seems like overkill."

"Rannoch? Who said anything about Rannoch?" Distracted, past-Shepard missed the sudden movement Tali made, a start combined with a hand flying to her throat. But his stupid, stupid younger self kept blundering on. "I've got it all planned out. Early release for this jailbird and then out into the galaxy to do what we do best."

"A-and what's that, Shepard?"

"Putting down bad guys. What else?" He hummed to himself with satisfaction as he put the mod in a drawer.

"I didn't think you'd been cleared for release yet." Tali's voice trembled, though how his past self failed to hear it, present-Shepard couldn't fathom. He ached to step in and put it right. He'd known then how important the plans they'd made were, he just didn't want to face them, face peace with those memories squatting in the back of his mind. That feeling of dwindling into nothing.

"Well, you can't keep a good guy down, sweetheart. This Spectre's gonna fly the coop. It's already arranged." He made a swooping motion with his hand as he gazed into the middle distance. "First, we'll get the Normandy back. Then we'll go pick up everyone and then-" The shaking of Tali's shoulders finally grabbed his younger self's attention. "What's the matter, Tali?"

A hitching noise filtered through her mask and she exploded, "You promised! We're supposed to go to Rannoch and live there, make a life there!"

He watched himself jerk forward and take her hands. "I know I did, but there's still stuff to do. Things to put right-"

"You've done enough! Let others take up where you left off!"

"C'mon, Tali, be reasonable. We'll mop up the mess the Reapers made of the galaxy, and then in a few years-"

"You can't expect me to just abandon my people now that we don't have any help at all to help revitalize our homeworld!"

Past-Shepard winced at the unintentional barb. It cut deep. It even cut present-Shepard. "Tali, I'm just trying to-"

"Do it all? Haven't you been doing that this whole time? Lay down your burden and come with me. I can make you happy, give you a good life." She pleaded with such elegance, her whole body involved in the act. "Please, they almost took you away from me this time. Let the future take care of itself. Build me that house on Rannoch."

Shepard watched his fool of a younger self swallow and stammer, "I-I just can't, Tali . . .."

The quarian took a deep and shaking breath and pulled her hands out of his. "Well, neither can I."

She left then, pausing at the door to say, "Goodbye, John."

And thus did something he'd meant to hold onto forever slip through his fingers. Present-Shepard looked at himself and swore, "Stubborn jackass. Go after her!"

"But you didn't, did you, Skip?" He'd almost forgotten about Ash, who came forward again to put her arms around his shoulders. Just a comfort, nothing more.

"No, I didn't. I thought the galaxy still needed me to fight its battles for it. Turns out I just wasted a year doing busy-work."

"The galaxy does still need you, Skip. It's the arena that's changed. A new kind of battle where shooting first isn't the only option. You might not have to kill anyone at all."

"I find it difficult to imagine such a thing. I've always solved all my problems with bigger and bigger guns." Shepard sighed, feeling heavy and weary. He touched Ash's forearm where it curled around his front and rasped, "Are we done?"

"Skip, don't let this pass into a dream to be forgotten. When the others come, and they will come, Skip, remember this: You couldn't be alone even if you wanted to be. I'll always be near. Just as the crew of the Normandy that searched those days never lost sight of you in their thoughts."

With that, she faded and he found himself back in the Ascension's medbay, laying on his cot. "Ash?"

"Keep it down over*gasp* there. I swear, all your *gasp* mumbling will drive me insane." A familiar weaselly voice made Shepard lift his head and look. He had a bunkmate. Braca, bandages all over his chest, holding clear tubes in place, lay not two beds away.

Now the pain he'd expected on first waking assailed him and he hissed as he took in the stump of his left shoulder. So, that happened. As for the rest, as implausible as it seemed, he felt fairly sure it had actually happened. Strange. To his roomie, he said, "Ah, Braca. How you doin', buddy?"

"I can't believe *gasp* you shot me."

"_I_ can't believe you got taken hostage."

"I'll have you stripped of your *gasp* authority!"

"No, you won't. They'll probably give me another medal for saving all your butts. Probably look at the 'shooting you' as a bonus." He really wished he could still do 'quoties.'

"How *gasp* dare you?!"

"You find you get a lot of wiggle room when you know fifty ways to kill a man with just a P-38. Plus the whole saving the galaxy thing, I guess." He shot a look over to where Braca's face grew redder and more splotchy by the second. "Calm down. You'll blow a gasket and I'm not getting up to press the comms if you do. Be glad you survived. Most don't. Hell, I lost an arm."

"You'll lose more *gasp* than that-"

"You know you sound kind of like a volus right now?" He waved off any rejoinders. "Listen, my shoulder hurts plenty awful, so I'm going to hit this morphine drip a bit. Probably going to take a lot to put me out, but I won't be out for long, thanks to my super-metabolism. Don't fuck with me while I'm sleeping, okay? And if you hear me talk, just ignore me. Or if you hear anyone talking to me, just ignore them, too."

"Shepard, what the *gasp* hell-"

"Shh, now. Talky time is over. Nap time is now." He felt the first teasing whispers of the narcotic hitting his bloodstream before the rest blindsided him and dropped his consciousness like a one hit wonder. He fell deeper and deeper into the black, and found another dead friend there.


	5. Chapter 5

"-Multiple contusions. Ablation of left arm below rotational joint. Possible fracture to fourth cervical vertebrae, likely cause: head trauma-"

"That _has_ to be Mordin." He opened his eyes in the dark space between consciousnesses and saw the white, black and red-clad figure of the man, or rather, salarian, who'd given everything to correct just one mistake. "I was always good at guessing games."

"Ah, Shepard, awake. Or rather, awareness of self achieved in state of hypnagogia, self-induced-"

Shepard held up a hand to forestall the avalanche of words heading his way. "Spare me the rundown, would you?"

Mordin smiled and nodded. Then he put a hand on Shepard's right arm and squeezed. "Good to see you, Shepard."

"Ditto. Alright, I'm here. What do you have to show me?"

The salarian pursed his lips and said, "Expected reluctance. Show of famous fortitude and stubbornness."

"Yeah, well, I've gotten good at giving in."

Solus shook his head, a sad flexing of that pronged head on its slender neck. "That is the problem. Given in. Given _up, _Shepard."

Shepard felt a stab of annoyance for the word-y doctor. "I'm tired, doc. Giving in was the only way to keep going."

"Not true. I will show you. Events happening elsewhere." Mordin waved his surgeon's hands and the darkness abated. Shepard found himself on a world he'd last seen as a huge ball in the sky, a fiery eye of destruction at its center. _Palaven. _

Turians bustled to and fro, always fixing, tuning, building. _Busy_, noted Shepard with approval. Turians knew how to get the job done. The ruin of Cipritine was fast losing its devastated status. A flash of familiar grey caught his eye. Tall even for a turian, Garrus Vakarian strolled by with his arms loaded with packages, like a man on a mission.

"Garrus!" Shepard found himself calling out with hand outstretched in a wave. Only belatedly did he realize the same rules from his trip into the past would apply. A pang flared in his chest. "Guess he did leave after all."

"He hasn't left quite yet in your *sniff* real-time. But." Mordin held up a finger. "Can't hear you. Or see you. Foible of astral travel. Could be remedied by-"

"Where's he going?" Shepard ignored the rest of Mordin's exhaustive analysis of the 'how' of all of this and slid into the crowd in Garrus' wake. He followed the turian to a small pre-fab residence. Shepard looked at it with a wondering eye. It seemed little more than a drop pod. Hell, it might _be _a drop pod, converted into temporary housing for the returning refugees.

Whatever it was, it seemed much too small for a family of any size. Shepard slid in right after Garrus before the door closed. There, he gazed upon as domestic a tableau as had ever existed. A turian female, belly bulging, sat on a curved couch that was clearly also used as a bed with another dark-faced male, clearly the father by the way he kept sliding his hand along her protruding mid-section.

Garrus paused as well, as charmed as Shepard by the scene. John knew that neither of them ever expected to have something like this. Wife, kids, that sort of thing only happened to people who were free to have them. Who didn't have an obligation to millions over their heads. A sorrow struck Shepard then. Garrus deserved to have this, too. Might have, if his best friend had set him free.

Garrus said, with a rumble of amusement, "Kid's not going to come any faster just because you will it, Korvin."

"I know, I just-" the now named Korvin stammered, chagrin pulling his mandibles down and in.

Pain lanced across Solana's face and she grunted before asking, "Are we good, Garrus? Is it arranged?"

Garrus' hands froze where they fiddled with the bags and boxes he'd brought. He turned to the couple. "I'm sorry, Sol. The hospitals are still full to max and there's no space at any of the shelter clinics."

This pronouncement made Solana crumple into Korvin's shoulder with a whimper. Korvin soothed her with a hand stroking her cheek. "Surely someone can spare a room for a few hours."

"No takers. The doctors won't displace an in-house patient." Garrus turned back to the packages. "But I got all the stuff we need to do it right here and-and I got one of the obstetricians to _swear _to me that they'd show up when we call."

"He better," growled Korvin.

"Oh, I think he got the picture when I stuck my gun in his face." Garrus smiled. A smile that turned pained when Solana let out a little keen. "It's the best I could do, Sol. I'm sorry."

Solana hissed and clutched at her belly. She turned to her mate. "We should have waited."

"No, we agreed. In the midst of all this turmoil, some hope had to remain. What more hope than that brought by a child?" Korvin lifted her face by the chin. "When you see him, you'll remember how it felt to defy all this . . . _death_ by bringing new life to our world. A child, a son, a little version of us with your coloring-"

"Or yours." She laughed, weak and tremulous. "Okay."

"Okay?" Korvin took her into his arms then and rocked her through her next contractions. "Okay."

When the latest set eased, Solana looked to her brother. "Afterward, will you stay with us?"

Korvin reached across the small room and grasped his brother-in-law's shoulder. "With three adults and a baby, we can justify requisitioning a larger accommodation."

Shepard, caught up in the drama, shook himself free. "They should do it anyway for the baby."

At his right, Mordin, who appeared sometime during the touching exchange before them, said, "They're turian. They won't take more than they're allotted. Others have just as little, with far less to look forward to."

Garrus, in the meantime, had sat on what little floor space remained and hugged his knees to his chest, looking away. "I . . . can't. I told him I'd be back."

John's heart clamored at the faith Garrus still had in him, even after the many hurts, the deceptions that should have ruined the only good thing Shepard had left.

Solana whispered, "He asks too much of you."

"Yes, I do." Shepard swallowed.

"It'll never be too much. He needs me, needs someone to stay steady and hold him up when he's falling. I'm _honored_ to do that for him. He's my friend."

Shepard hunched down next to his best friend, his partner. "What did I ever do to deserve you, big guy?"

Korvin turned an understanding smile on Garrus. "Then you must go back."

Gratitude lit those alien blue eyes up. "After the Naming. I'll stay for as long as I can."

Solana rested her palm on Garrus' forehead. "We were thinking of naming him after your friend."

"Oh, he'd just love that. Stroke his ego for sure." Garrus laughed with them.

The scene faded and John found himself once again in a new place with Mordin still at his side. He looked down at his bare feet and sighed. "He should stay with them. With his family."

Mordin poked him in the chest. "Family, also. Equal, in his eyes. See, Shepard, out of your line of sight, they still care. Still connected."

"They need him more than I do."

"Yes. Needs of the many might most times outweigh the needs of the few, but needs of the few still *sniff* important. Still worth consideration." Mordin gestured around to the blasted cityscape they stood in. "Recognize this place?"

Shepard took in the sky, the torn ground with its colossal ruins that seemed much older than a mere two years. "Tuchanka."

"I come here often. To think. To remember." The doctor gestured toward a fallen arch. "Watch."

"But you cured the genophage, why would you feel the need to dwell on your mista-"

"Watch, Shepard."

So, he did and felt amazement as a full dozen krogan children came galloping around the fallen stone, shouting and laughing. They gamboled and wrestled and generally acted like pure savages. Shepard found himself grinning at the sight of an impromptu game of king-of-the-mountain taking shape on one of the ruin's misshapen obelisks. One kid, more rambunctious than the rest, laid about with fists and feet, climbing higher and higher until the child stood victorious on the monument's tip. The the tyke roared, a mere squeak compared to the full-throated bellow an adult boasted.

"Oh, man, that kid has spunk."

Mordin hummed in agreement. 'My namesake. Very proud of her."

John's jaw dropped. "Urdnot . . . _Mordin?"_

"Wrex _always_ keeps his promises." Mordin shot him a wink. "Very proud of her. Wish she took after her mother more, but was unable to help modify genes to curtail more aggressive tendencies. Because dead, you see?" The salarian sniffed and tried to puff out a chest that by design didn't puff at all. "Still, among krogan, she will blossom."

"I . . . don't know what to say." Stunned, he could only shake his head.

"Doesn't happen to you often, does it? Have noticed you never lack for words."

"You're one to talk," Shepard grumbled. Then he stilled to watch them, all of them, just playing in Tuchanka's fragmented past like it was the biggest playground in the galaxy, built just for them. He had to smile, glad at his heart that this one thing turned out right. He turned to Mordin and said, "Thank you. For showing me this."

"_Wanted_ to show you. You forgot. Didn't save the galaxy for council. Or Alliance." Mordin swept a hand out toward the children. "Saved galaxy . . . for them. For these and their parents. For Garrus and his family. Hard to see the ones at the bottom when you stand on the summit. Lose perspective. Start believing nothing worth saving. Not true. _They_ were. They _are._"

Shepard closed his eyes as this truth struck home with the potency of a bullet and he clutched a hand over his chest. He said, with eyes still shut, "Can you . . . show me Tali?"

"No." That made his eyes fly open. Mordin looked back at him with sympathy. "Not part of this. Cannot visit everyone, only ones important to the Task."

John _heard _the capital letter settle into place and wanted to ask what the ultimate purpose of this Task was, but his longing hijacked his tongue. "Why not? I just want to see if-if she's happy. If-" _her face still reflected the anguish I heard in her voice those two years ago._

"Could you bear it if it did?" Mordin answered the unspoken question.

"Great. Now you can read my mind. Perfect." Shepard raged to hide his bitter disappointment. "How long have you been doing that?"

"Entire time. Best to think of death as a way of losing one's *sniff* limitations."

"Wow. Then why don't we all try it, if it's so great?" Sarcasm, the poorest weapon in his arsenal, only came out when he lacked anything better.

"All eventually do. But limits are not the only things lost." Ominous. Like the look on the salarian's face now. "One more to show you. Then way is open for last journey."

Shepard shuddered, though at what he could not say.

With a wave, Mordin took them somewhere else. Somewhere cold. And in the lonely wastes, all glistening with ice and snow, sat a camp, military in setup. Six identical barracks, with a command bunker at one end and an obstacle course at the other. Mordin and he stood near the bunker. Lights shone out of the windows, signalling to Shepard that someone must be home. And awake.

He could hear voices filtering through the glass and pressed close to peer past the frost. Two blurs moved about in there before a hearth. Suddenly, he found himself inside the cabin, stumbling forward on bare feet. Two men he knew conversed by the fire. Two men who'd been among the first to leave. Shepard fought down a bitter wash at the thought, knowing now what really spawned that heated argument. His own fear of abandonment.

"C'mon, admit it, Sparkles. If he called tomorrow, you'd be on the first boat out."

"Jesus, Vega, I told you to stop calling me that." Kaidan rolled his padded chair closer to the fire and set his boots on the hearth's stones.

"We tried Glowstick, but you didn't like that one either. How bout 'Elvis' then?"

Alenko, former Spectre, laughed and shook his head. "How bout not. You know what, I don't care any more. Just don't say any of them in front of the men. Hard enough to maintain discipline over a bunch of hot-headed hotshot triggermen who think they're hot shit for qualifying for N7 school without them calling me 'Twinkles.'"

"What? And undermine your dubious authority? Wouldn't dream of it, hermano." The muscle-y latino stretched out on a nearby bunk, bulky arms pillowing his head. Shepard noted how more tattoos dotted their vast acreage. "You didn't answer the question, though. Just thought I'd point that out."

Kaidan sighed. "Maybe. If he'd admit to being a stubborn jackass."

"You're still sore he left the Alliance again, aren't you?"

"And you're not? Tell me it didn't make you angry. That somehow the Alliance wasn't good enough for him any more." Even Shepard could hear the bitter note in Kaidan's tone. "How could he do that? Leave us like that to go work for those assholes?"

"He's got bigger worries now." Stalwart defender, that had James' name all over it.

"I still got eyes out there, Vega. I might not be a Spectre any more, but I hear things."

"Like what?"

"Like how he never takes a breather. Like how his people don't get shoreleave unless the Normandy's in dry-dock for repairs." Kaidan winced under his pompadour and sipped the steaming beverage in his hands. "It can't be good for the crew to work them like that, let alone what it might be doing to Shepard himself."

James looked over at his CO and smiled a sly smile. "You're _worried_ about him."

Alenko shot him a frown back. "What can I say, I'm a worrier. And those messages from Garrus worry me."

"I thought Garrus said they were getting the job done, or so you told me."

"It's what he doesn't say. Glossing over strange reactions, leaving out things I might question, that sort of thing. It all adds up, Vega. It makes a troublesome negative shape of things going . . . wrong." Kaidan stared down into his cup. "I hope he's not cracking up out there."

"Loco going loco?" A flicker of doubt flew over James' face. An anxious silence fell over the bunker.

Shepard let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Something pinged in the back of his mind. A face, green and blue, already huge eyes even huger in pants-wetting terror, speaking to him from two inches in front of his pistol's deadly end. The drell he'd let go a few hours ago.

"Yes, Shepard." Mordin looked over at him with the full weight of judgement in his jewel-like eyes. "And what happened then?"

John swallowed. "Smart boy and his goons went on a rampage."

"You could have stopped it before it even began."

Guilt assailed him and he saw it clearly then, what he'd really done. "I didn't mean to-It was just a-" How exactly was he going to end that sentence? He'd let a lot of people on that ship die because he was bored? _How sick is that? _He remembered how it felt though. To feel the blood pump, the heart race. Fighting and killing and feeling powerful.

"It was more than boredom, though. What else?"

"I-I didn't want to disappear. When the council told me to retire, it felt like being under that rock all over again. I thought maybe if I-" Shepard shook himself all over and felt the world slip and bend under his feet, a crazed tilting that left him nauseous. "Oh, God, I did do that. And it felt so good."

"Temptation to act when action not required."

"I thought to myself 'it doesn't matter, none of it matters any more.'" He had to sit to keep from falling over. In his mind, he saw those hanar bodies strewn every which way, their slippery guts spilled across the floor. He also saw all those drell fall to his superior ability to make war. _But the war's over. Why am I still fighting it?_

They'd never really had a chance.

Mordin agreed, "No, they did not."

He played with them like pieces in a game and delighted in its wickedness.

"Yes, you did."

Shepard's mouth went dry and he turned a bleak look of self-loathing on his dead salarian friend. "What do I do, Mordin? What does my . . . madness cost everyone?"

The doctor sat on the bunk with him and grasped his shoulder. "It is not for me to show you. But think you have an idea. An inkling."

The background swirled and flowed into the familiar blackness that kicked off this leg of the ride. Mordin's presence faded into the ether. Just before Shepard opened his eyes, he heard the Mordin whisper, "For you have already started doing it."

Like a death knell, the words resounded in the core of him. He trembled at their power. Covering his face with his hand, he took in a deep and shaky breath.

"Ah, Captain, you're awake."

John jumped in surprise and peeked out from between his fingers to see all the councilors standing at his bedside. "Uh, councilors. To what do I owe the pleasure."

Tevos, her smile might be sweeter if he didn't know about the rock of ice she had instead of a heart, said, "It seems we might have been a bit hasty on the matter of your retirement."

Nyort, head bandaged from the blow to the skull he'd taken earlier, spoke up next, "Indeed. There are obviously still threats out there that need your . . . expert handling."

Nothing like a clear and present danger to their actual personages to get the council moving. He fought the rueful twist of a smile that wanted to creep over his face.

The turian councilor looked down at him from his full height, unwilling to bend even for a second. "A man who can take out thirty terrorists armed with only a pistol has to still have a place in the cosmos."

_I had the Lancer,_ thought Shepard, but he wasn't about to correct them and then try to explain why he had a weapon he wasn't supposed to have even brought aboard.

Pakrag jerked his thumb at the others. "They wanna give you the joint fleets."

Shepard felt panic and temptation war at his heart.

Braca, now mobile, leaned in with a bitter smile. But his mouth made noises that seemed cheerful and conciliatory. "How does _Admiral _Shepard sound to you?"

Thousands of ideas flooded into his head. Ways of doing it all better. Making it all better. Then his guts churned. _Think of all the ways it could go wrong. What if this is what Ash and Mordin were warning me about. _

He licked his lips and said, "I thought there weren't any big battles out there."

"You said it yourself. There's always _some_thing."

The devil in him whispered, _And if there isn't, you can always **make **something happen._

He denied that voice, biting the inside of his cheek. He stared up at their expectant faces and felt shaken all the way down to his marrow. He forced himself to say, "I just lost an arm. Gimme a chance to think it over when I'm not doped out on morphine."

"Of course, Captain. Or should we say . . . Admiral." Tevos smirked as she shooed away the rest of the councilors. All except Braca, who returned to his own cot.

Shepard looked over at the human councilor and managed to joke, "Told you so."

"Just because they out-voted me doesn't mean I still don't think you deserve censure for your actions."

_Oh, I deserve censure alright. If not for me, no one on this ship would have been shot at all. _The acceptance of responsibility felt strangely comforting, though now he had a bigger mess to deal with. Take the fleets or leave them. What to do? Which was the correct action? How to prevent whatever catastrophe loomed?

Shepard decided that he didn't have the complete picture yet. He needed that final piece and if the pattern held true, then whoever showed up next would show him the future. His future.


	6. Chapter 6

_Why is it always snowing? _

Shepard had no sooner closed his eyes than found himself back in the un-space where his dead comrades brought him to talk. He'd forced another high dose of painkiller out of the medtech handling his care. Playing it up big time, he whined about the pain until the physician dosed him just to shut him up. Or so he felt sure.

And in this empty and desolate darkness, flakes fell from a sky he couldn't see. A sky that might not even be there. He stood on a ground covered in grey ash. It coated his toes and turned both his feet black. Then he realized that what fell from the sky wasn't snow at all, but ash. A chill ran up his spine.

He shouted, "I'm here! I need to know!"

Silence answered him, but somewhere ahead of him, a light flickered and grew, framing a small building. He could just make out a steepled roof and a chimney stack billowing black smoke. That couldn't be right. No modern government would allow that sort of atmospheric emission when it can be prevented with a simple filtering system.

Without really meaning to, he drifted over in that direction. The shapeless nothing around him started to take on form. The ghostly grey outlines of a city filled the landscape. People, no more than shadows, darted to and fro while pausing at times to watch the sky. Their very attitude and body language spoke of some unnamed terror, something imminent.

Though only the building he headed toward had solidity and realness, he couldn't shake the idea that all of it was real. Somewhere, some . . . _when__, _this was happening.

Shepard jolted in surprise when a sudden, loud sound broke the tense silence. A siren wailed all across the city. The people around him fled, sprinting into the shelter offered by the ghostly buildings. He looked up and saw ships descending into the atmo. The loud thundering of anti-aircraft guns filled the air. Then the bellies of the invaders opened up and he saw bombs start their deadly descent.

All around, they impacted the city with earth-shaking devastation, turning some buildings into powder. The concussive shockwaves grew nearer.

Driven by self-preservation instinct, Shepard ran. He ran to the only place that seemed real enough to him to actually be protection. The door opened just before he got there and he dove right through just as a bomb went off close behind him, throwing him forward with its force. Knees shaking, he pulled himself back to his feet.

Someone nearby yelled, "Shut that door! Kinetic barrier won't hold unless we're sealed!"

Another person must have heard and obeyed, for the howling blasts cut off abruptly. Shepard could still hear the bombs go off, but only as a faint thudding.

Racing heart calming, he took a look around. It smelled like death. All around, lay bodies stacked in neat piles. Some piled as high as ten feet. Three men worked a furnace at the far end, shoving body after body along a conveyor belt into the flames. A couple women stood off to one side, hooded and cloaked. One turian-shaped by outline, the other could be human.

Shepard felt dawning horror as he realized he stood in a-a crematorium. Such ancient and ignoble means of body-disposal hadn't been used in centuries. There were new methods, cleaner methods. And the way the men kept shoving the corpses in like so much trash made a deep part of him rebel at the mistreatment of the dead.

"Wait," said one of the watchers, holding up her slim blue hand. The workers stopped their work. Shepard crept closer, uncomfortable at intruding, but unable to resist the call in him to go to them. To _see._

The body third in line before the fire, mangled and wrecked, lay curled on its side, naked. From the plates and angles and raised back, he could see it used to be a turian. A very tall turian. Suddenly it became all-important that he know who it was. He moved forward until he had confirmation of his worst fear. "Oh, God, no. No."

The woman threw her hood back. An asari. Liara. She put her hands to the corpse's face and pulled it toward the light. "It's him."

"Mistress, the contagion!" One of the workers exclaimed as all of them leaned away in horror.

"I've been immunized, fool," said a snarling Liara. Shepard quailed at the viciousness contorting the once gentle asari's countenance. To the other female, the turian, she said, "You wanted confirmation. Here he is."

The other stood closer and drew her hood back as well. Solana, face pulled in grief and rage, looked down at her brother. "Garrus."

"So you see now. No one will be spared, not even your brother, who was most loved once." Liara, this cold and hate-filled version of her, stood tall and regal.

"No, no one." Solana shuddered and patted her brother's naked corpse. "Shepard deserves so much more than a simple death for this."

The meaning of what they said started to sink in and it was all he could do to choke back the bile rising in his throat. He fell to his knees. "No! Please, God, I couldn't have-It can't be true!"

A rough and sandy voice filled his ears. "But it is. Garrus toiled at your side against the workings of the unknown mischief that took hold of the galaxy, never realizing that the source lay beside him the entire time."

Shepard, lost in his grief and shock, cast about. "Who's there?"

Nothing. The shadows did not part to show him the speaker. Before him, Solana cleared her throat and rasped, "You have me and mine. Palaven burns, but what is left of us is yours."

Looking at her, looking at both women and how they seemed . . . hollow, he shook. The first and only time he'd seen Solana, she'd been gravid and so full of life. Afraid of the answer, but nevertheless moved to ask it, he said, "Where's the baby?"

"Died in childbirth. The doctors didn't come," the mysterious voice whispered back. Whoever spoke it seemed right at his shoulder, but when he spun, no one was there. Movement from Liara drew his attention back to the fore.

The asari smiled a tight and humorless smile. Her eyes glittered like chips of ice. "I knew you'd see reason. Now, let us go plan the final assault. Javik waits with his marauders."

"What about Garrus?" asked Shepard. He reached out a tentative hand and laid it on his dead friend's chest. This should never have happened. There should be a heartbeat under his palm. Wrong. So very wrong.

Solana echoed him, "What about Garrus?"

"He'll be avenged. What does his meat matter? Let the knackermen do their job." The women left and disappeared into the foggy background.

"No! Come back. Bury him!" Shepard tried to keep the workers from returning to the conveyor belt, but his hand just passed through them. He shouted at them, "Stop! You can't do this! He deserves to be buried. On Palaven, with his mum and dad." He watched the fire eat the body two bodies ahead of Garrus with growing despair.

"But Palaven burns. There is no Palaven," spoke that voice again, deep and calm. "Just as Earth burned, so did Palaven."

He knew that voice now. "Thane? Thane! Stop them, please!"

""Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths, I ask forgiveness. Kalahira, whose waves wear down stone and sand." Still no sign of the assassin. The dark corners hid him completely. But his voice filled the space from edge to edge and rang in Shepard's ears.

"For God's sake, stop them! Please! I can't-I just-" His pleading fell on the universe's indifferent ears. Garrus' body drew closer and closer to the flames and Shepard could do nothing to stop it. He clutched at the immovable corpse and sobbed as it dragged him along. "Garrus, I'm-I'm sorry. I can't stop them. I'm so sorry. Forgive me." His gibberings became incomprehensible. He cried out as the fire started to lick at the corpse's heels. As though _his _feet had been put to the torch.

Across from him, on the other side of the conveyor belt, the darkness coalesced into the slim and graceful form of Thane Krios. The assassin laid one green hand upon Garrus and intoned, "Kalahira, wash the sins from this one."

Meeting Thane's eyes was probably one of the most difficult things he ever had to do, but somehow, he accomplished it. Shepard felt blown away by the profound acceptance he found there, and, because there existed not a single thing left to do for Garrus, he whispered the words of the prayer with Krios as he finished it.

"And set him on the distant shore of the infinite spirit."

Then, Garrus was gone. Into the ravenous fire. For one insane second, Shepard wanted to fling himself in there after him. For if he died as his present self, he wouldn't live to one day do this horrific thing.

Thane, showing the uncanny ability to read his mind as Mordin had, rumbled, "It would change nothing."

Dumbstruck, he could only say, "I did this."

"Yes," came the flat reply.

"And all that, out there, I did that, too?"

Thane reached out and turned him away from the fire. All else had faded away, but that damn furnace stayed. Shepard resisted for a moment. He just couldn't get over the fact that his best friend was dead. At his hand.

But Thane insisted, so John put the fire at his back and listened as the assassin said, "It started small. A few forced confrontations here and there, just to wet your hands with fresh blood from time to time. Then you started making excuses to go bigger. The joint fleet becomes massive under your command. You justify it by starting a few wars. Just stoking the flames of centuries-old hatreds. Soon, others like you flock to your banner. Some want power. Some want possessions. But some, and these few you raise to stand at your side, just want to watch the galaxy burn."

"But Garrus would've seen. He would've stopped me-"

"He tried, but you deceived him too well. He never saw the knife until it was too late." Thane waved and they were outside. "_This_ . . . is Horizon."

"No . . .." So changed he didn't even recognize it. Such squalor all over what should be a vibrant, living colony. Ruination. With bombs falling from orbit.

"This is the tableau on every defiant world across the cosmos. All who will not obey, die. All who fight, die. The ones who will not fight, who refuse. . . you will do far worse to than just kill. Your contempt for peace spawns a contagion. It renders all who contract it rabid. You play the peacebringer and send your herald to countless worlds to parley. Garrus never even knew of the plague his blood carried. A virus that would claim even him in the end. Soon, millions would be put down. So . . . the burnings begin."

The fine ash coating his arm, his shoulders; it used to be people. Shepard dropped to his knees and retched, but nothing came up. He dry-heaved until tears ran down his face. Just before he pitched facedown into the ground, Thane caught him and held him. What strength must be in that slender frame to hold all two-forty of him aloft.

He flopped, weak as a kitten, into the assassin's embrace and whispered through chapped and bleeding lips, "How do I stop it? Tell me how to stop it. If I have to die, then do it, Thane."

Thane set him on his feet, but supported him with one strong arm. "That is not my Task, my friend. And it will solve nothing."

"I don't understand. It would solve plenty. No evil me to be around to fuck everything up, and Garrus-" He couldn't continue, only wrenched his head back and forth to dispel the words. "Should I kill myself?"

"That would only buy the galaxy time. It is not the best option."

Shepard pulled himself away with an angry yank. He shouted into Thane's face, "Then what is?"

The assassin just looked at him with his huge liquid eyes drowning in sorrow.

"What _is,_ Thane?" His shout rang across the sudden stillness.

"You will know when the time comes. Then you will make a choice."

The background grew dark, an absolute blackness that blinded Shepard. He flailed out to try to touch Thane, but encountered nothing. Before the panic could really set in, the area lightened enough for him to see. The quality of the light had changed too. Instead of grey and washed out like on Horizon, a throbbing orange glow that hurt his eyes lit the new surroundings. He stood in a corridor of a space ship. Decks thrummed under his feet in that familiar warbling of a ship in transit. The small hairs rose at his nape. A threat existed somewhere near by.

And once again, Thane had disappeared. Shepard whispered into the oppressive gloom of the ship, "Thane?"

A tall door at his back slid open, silent and ominous. He eyed the dark interior with a suspicious glare. Keeping his steps light and silent, Shepard moved into the room, peering around for clues as to why Thane brought him here. The sickly-sweet stench of carrion struck him full in the nose. Shepard pressed his hand over the lower half of his face and resisted gagging.

Utter silence beyond the ship noises greeted him. Nothing in the dark moved or breathed, but still, somehow he knew something _laired_ here.

A something that broke the silence with a rumbled, "I can hear you, little annoyance. Sniffing around my stash."

Twin crimson lights flared to life in the dark. Shepard took an involuntary step back. A soft beeping from where the voice came from presaged the brightening of the lights just above him. Not much, just enough to see a little further. And what he saw made him want to vomit all over again.

Bodies hung suspended from long poles, impaled through torso, some width-wise, some length-wise. They flanked a walkway that led to a raised dais, on which sat an ornate chair. _A throne?_ And upon that throne sat a man in shadow. Or at least it was shaped like a man. For all he knew, it could be an honest to god demon, the way it glared at him with glowing red eyes.

It watched him look around in horror. "Do you like my trophies, tiny irritant?"

Nothing wanted to come out of his mouth, nothing that made sense anyway. "I-I-"

"Come a little closer." When he failed to, the man lifted his head from where it had rested on his fist and cajoled, "Come closer into the light or I'll stick you on one of my little pig-poles. Then I'll look all I want as I listen to you die by inches."

Shepard found himself shuffling forward. He blinked and swallowed back a sudden intuition, a sudden _certainty._

"So let's see what manner of beastie wandered into my house, then." The master of this charnel house stood and stepped down the path toward him. Shepard felt his knees grow weaker with every step, until finally, the light revealed what he knew the moment he'd heard this other speak, but had denied in his heart. He looked at himself, a self savage in countenance and mad of eye, and quailed with abject despair.

The other Shepard grinned, full of false cheer and welcome. "It looks like a man, but is it a man? Or is it a little piggy?"

Still, he could not speak.

"What say you? Are you a little piggy like all these little piggies?" He waved a hand to where the bodies contorted midair. He pointed at each in turn. "This little piggy went squealing to the Council. This little piggy led an assault on my flagship. This little piggy had roast beef. And this little piggy," he grasped that corpse's toe and wiggled it, "went 'wee, wee, wee,' the entire time I was sticking him up there. He's my favorite. There are others, but I think you get the idea."

_Can he not see who I am? _Another quandary: How is this version of him able to see and talk to him? A word forced itself out from between his lips, containing all of his pain and rage, "Why?"

"Why what?" said that other him in a dismissive fashion, sidling a little closer in a predator's stalk. The spotlight illuminated him starkly, made that familiar face criss-crossed with new scars resemble a skull. All sunken eyesockets and cheeks. The left arm, a mass of exposed hardware and flesh, cocked at the elbow and rested that hand on a hip. "You look a little familiar. Did I kill someone related to you?"

"You could say that." Shepard felt a furnace alight at his core. Here he was, face to face with every bad thing about him, the very worst he was capable of and by God, he would have answers. "You know, I got that you had a shitty life and it made you a bit wrong, a bit twisted in the deep places. And I understand now why you couldn't face some mornings without blowing chunks the moment you got out of bed. Even that drell kid, I get it. I realize now that was a big step in the wrong direction. But you had to know! You had to know where that road was going. Why didn't you ever turn around? _Why didn't you just stop?"_

Those last words rang off the walls around them. Shepard, who hadn't realized he'd been getting louder and louder with every syllable, winced. Even the other him seemed to suffer a moment of doubt, tilting his head to look at his counterpart more closely. Then he blinked and snorted. "Another bleeding heart. It is a little piggy, after all." He started to turn away.

"Answer me!" He took a threatening step forward, his one fist clenched before him.

"You want to know why? Why, all of this? Why torture and kill billions? Why keep the galaxy balanced on the razor's edge of war just to tip it over?" Future-Shepard shrugged. "It's fun."

"Don't give me that crap. I know you. I know all about the rot tearing away at your guts. The _fucking cowardice!"_

_"How _do you think you know me?" Evil-Shepard peered at him, then a wide smile broke out on his face. "Ah, I see. Another clone. Well, buddy, I hate to tell you this, but there's only one Shepard."

"Yeah? Well, it ain't you. You stopped being Shepard when you started playing with people like they were things. You stopped being Shepard when you started killing just to silence that scared kid still crying for his fucked up junkie mommy that you and I both know still lives at the heart of you. You butchered every good thing you've ever done. You _murdered_ Shepard!" His vision started to turn red around the edges. The obscenity of it all. The outrage!

"Whether it's me now or synthetics later, what does it matter? And they were so sanctimonious. Holding one over the other like we were somehow more virtuous. Well, I showed them." That devil in his skin giggled, a mad light dancing in his eyes. "I showed them good. They think robots are bad. They haven't _seen_ bad yet. I'll show them we can be _worse_ than the Reapers ever were."

"Haven't you done enough?" he spat.

"Nope. Not until every last one sees things my way. Not until everybody remembers that it's always been '_eat_ or be eaten,'" His other self said this with a salacious lick of his lips, "A wolf's age to last eons."

A whirlwind of fury scoured the inside of his skull. His skin buzzed with it. All he could see was that capering demon over there standing at the feet of his sacrifices. A symbol of all he could do, would do. All the terrible wrongs. His voice became a deadly hiss, as he summed up everything that had gone wrong in this one act, "You killed Garrus."

All at once, the other him froze and for a second, something other than wickedness flickered in those glowing red eyes. Something like shame. Then his lips spread once again into a tiger's smile and he said with little concern, "Who?"

A scream of pure hate left Shepard's lips as he leapt at that other, hell-bent on sundering him with his bare hands. Evil-Shepard braced to meet him. They clashed, two identical men save for a few decades' difference. Reflected in the other's eyes, Shepard saw himself, snarling and snapping like a beast. Even one-armed, he was more than a match for that demonic thing traipsing about in his guise.

No, as much as he'd like to deny it, he knew this man, knew his reasons and his choices. He saw how easy it had been to fall and how daunting the thought of ever trying to rise again could be. Better to keep falling. Take the easy path. Hold onto what he used to be long after it became irrelevant, long past the point it became dangerous.

With a shudder and a shout, he threw future-Shepard off him and onto the ground. Straddling the tyrant yet-to-come, he let loose a flurry of punches with his one arm. The other him tried to block as many as he could, but no amount of madness could deflect his colossal fury. Soon, cheekbones cracked under his fist, teeth flew off in different directions. One last punch crushed an eyesocket and the eye within popped with an obscene little squish. Future-Shepard lay limp under him, pummeled into a pile of broken bones and bad mistakes.

Rage spent, Shepard looked down at that other him and realized he wept. Small droplets cascaded down onto that ruined face. His shoulders started to shake, and he broke down, wet sobs wrenching out of the deepest part of him. "Oh, God, _look_ at me. Just . . . look . . .." He didn't know if he meant the one or the other or both. He raised a bloody hand, palm up, beseeching.

Evil-Shep looked up at him, and smiled around a mouthful of broken teeth. "You . . . are . . . me. From . . . be-fo-'"

A choked and mad laugh tore itself free of Shepard's throat. "Finally clicked, huh?"

"Hhow . . .you like . . . the view?" Even beaten, a malicious sparkle lit that one remaining eye. "You . . . be me. . . F-fut-ure."

"No. I won't. I deny you." He gathered the other him's shirt in his fist and lifted the man bodily so their faces were only inches apart. "I _defy _the existence of you. This will _never _come to pass." And at his heart, he felt the flame of determination flare back into life and wondered at how he hadn't known it had been missing. It warmed him, inside and out.

He heard, somewhere outside this room they'd battled in, the sounds of explosions and shouting. Someone must be attacking the ship. Good for them.

Looking back down at his doppleganger, he smirked. "Sounds like the villagers have come with pitchforks and torches, Vlad."

The other him chuckled at the reference. For some reason, this made his own mouth quirk into a real smile. He finally found someone who got him, and it had to be a sadistic, mass-murdering, crazy version of himself from the future. Or . . . _a_ future, anyway. And not one that would ever see the light of day, if he had anything to say about it.

Evil-Shepard choked out, "Leave . . . me here. Disa-ppoint . . . them . . . if Dr. Franke-enstein. . . isn't in his . . . castle."

Shepard stood and looked down at himself. "Least I can do for myself. I hope they gain some measure of revenge from fucking you sideways, buddy."

"Surely. You . . . won't . . . forget?" Now that eye, though it still glittered with malice and insanity, also pleaded with him.

"Still scared of the dark? Don't worry. I won't forget you." Ignoring the horrible gratitude in his other self's face, he called to the ceiling. "I'm ready. Take me where I need to be."

Thane's warm and sandy voice found him in the sudden swirling maelstrom he flung himself into, "As you wish, Shepard. Good luck."

"And to you, my friends. All of you."


	7. Chapter 7

He watched Garrus pace back and forth before the open shuttle hatch, pausing on occasion to look at his chronometer and tap his foot. The turian huffed and sighed, anxiety in the line of his shoulders. Finally, Garrus threw his arms up and growled, "Stubborn jackass."

"Funny. That's what I thought, too." He took an obscene amount of delight in the way Garrus jumped straight up in the air in surprise. A whole foot, at least. Seeing as he never got the drop on the sniper before, he felt triumph bow his lips into a grin.

Garrus spun and looked at him there, sitting calm as can be, in the shuttle. A shuttle he must have been sure was empty. "Shepard?!"

"Yeah, you know, that 'stubborn jackass.'" His eyes tingled a bit at seeing his best friend alive and well. Not burned up on some planet somewhere like garbage. He sniffed and blinked the stinging away.

"I-well, where did-it-how?" Flustered Garrus is quite the sight to see. Then those sharp eyes focused on him with alarm. "What happened to your arm?"

"What? This? Happens all the time. I tell you. They don't make these things like they used to." Shepard waved it off.

"I'm serious. You look like you've been through a war. Well, another war." Garrus stared at him, concern written plain as day all over his mandibles.

"There was a bomb. Some terrorists. You know, the usual." Shepard looked at him askance. "What about you, buddy? I'm surprised you didn't already know. What were you doing last night that had you so occupied?" He added a little lascivious eye-brow wiggle.

"I was stuck in a maintenance corridor all night fixing circuit relays in total blackout. Come to think of it, I did hear some thumping, but I thought it was just engine noises." Garrus scratched his fringe and looked harried. "Figures the second I let you out of my sight, you get blown up. You have got to be more careful, Shepard."

"Concern duly and appreciatively noted, Officer Vakarian."

Garrus shuffled in the tense silence that followed. Then he drawled, "So, come to see me off?"

"Nope." He almost laughed at the quizzical look that pulled at Garrus' face then. "Come to see if your offer still stands."

"You . . . you want to go with me?" The glee that flushed the turian's face soured quickly. "Wait. You're not just wanting to go with me because there's a job on the way or you wanna make sure I come back or-"

"Nope again. Retired this morning. Thirty minutes ago, in fact. Gave back the hoodie and everything." Shepard patted his duffle. Everything he owned in this life lay in there. Well, minus all the things that really mattered and didn't have a corporeal form, like the ties between he and Garrus, or he and everyone else out there he'd somehow thought he'd lost. They were there. To touch them, he had only to reach out. Those feelings, if given dimension and solidity, he doubted would fit into a standard issue dufflebag.

He became aware of a stunned silence from the other side of the shuttle. Garrus, standing at the hatch, frozen in a posture of absolute amazement. Shepard snorted. "Now get your ass in here. We can talk about it on the way to Palaven. It's your nephew's Naming Day, after all!"

* * *

Shepard used his omnitool to hack into the hospital's comm systems. At his back stood Garrus and Korvin, between them they supported Solana, who keened in pain as her baby fought to be born. The ex-Spectre had worked hard all morning to convince the family that this would work. That they had a shot to have the baby born in sterile conditions if they just let Shepard do his thing. If he knew how to do one thing, it was how to be convincing.

_Step one: Stroll into the place as if you own it. _Shepard fought the smile that kept wanting to emerge on his face as not a single turian questioned his right to ramble about their hospital. As the sole human in sight, one would think that might raise flags. He swiftly nabbed an unused wheelchair from the emergency room. Wheeling it back out, they sat Solana in it. She sighed in relief, though sweat still poured down her plates.

_Step two: Introductions. _Shepard opened his comms to every room and hallway in the massive building. "My name is John Constantine Shepard. My friends are in need of a room for a couple of hours and a doctor to help deliver a baby. If any of you who are not in critical condition can please spare your space just until the baby is in the free and clear, please alert your nurses."

A doctor appeared at his side almost instantaneously. A scowl creased his brow-plates. "Sir, you can't just barge in here and demand-"

"Doctor!" a nearby nurse waved him over to her station. A low and heated argument ensued, with much pointing and looks shot over toward their small party.

The doctor, voice rising in incredulousness, exclaimed, _"The whole fourth floor?!"_

_Step three: Have faith in people. _Shepard grinned as the doctor came bustling back over to them.

"It seems some patients have elected to be . . . generous. We have space for her until the baby's born."

Korvin and Garrus both gave a shout of elation. Garrus picked him up and squeezed him in a tight embrace while his brother-in-law pounded Shepard's back with the flat of one hand. When his feet found the ground again, Shepard felt Solana grab his hand. He looked down at her as she said, "Thank you, Shepard. You don't know what this means to us."

"Call me John. And if I can't use my reputation to help my friends, then what the hell good is it?" He put his hand over hers. "Now go have fun squeezing that watermelon out of you."

With a dubious look over her shoulder at them, she let the doctors take her. Korvin trailed along in their wake like a lost puppy. Shepard smiled at the image.

Garrus dropped a hand on his shoulder and drawled, "Constantine? Really?"

"What?" mused he, thinking more about turian babies and rambunctious krogan kids. Just legacies, in general.

"Your middle name."

"Don't be silly. I don't have a middle name." Shepard turned to his friend. "Sounds impressive, though, doesn't it? 'Constantine!' Might use that one for a while."

"What do you mean, 'awhile'?"

"Well, I get bored easily. I go through lots of middle names. Haven't found one yet that really stuck."

"Just go without. Turians don't have middle names either. You could be like us. Honorary turian, style of thing, to go along with your status of 'almost a krogan'."

"Aw, Garrus, are you trying to . . . adopt me?" He laughed at the way Garrus rolled his eyes. Strange how eye-rolling, shrugging, and quotie fingers have made it big across the galactic civilizations.

"Too late. I already think of you as family."

Moved, because while it was known, no one had said it. Shepard's heart thumped. He patted his friend on the back and replied, "Me, too, big guy. Me, too."

* * *

_Turian kids are cute, in their own way, I suppose. _With a certain dubiousness, he looked down at the little thing, which looked back with skepticism. When the baby wheeled his too-large head around on a skinny neck toward mom and trilled, as though to say _'What's with this fucking guy?',_ Shepard lost it. He started laughing. So hard that he had to pass the baby off to his papa.

"Really, Shepard, our young aren't that ridiculous looking. No more than human babies. All pink and squishy." Garrus over there, trying to look affronted for his sister's sake, but failing, because he'd seen it, too.

Solana, for whom St. Shepard could do no wrong, laughed as well, light and chiming. The deliverance of the baby went off without a hitch and the miracle of medi-gel made it possible for them to leave that evening, if they wanted.

"So," started Shepard, "I didn't want to be a busybody, buuuut . . .."

"Oh, here it comes," mumbled Garrus. "What now? Re-enlisting with Aralakh Company? Going to go off to be an asari commando?"

"Whoa, so under-equipped up here," and he cupped over where his pecs were as he continued, "for that last thing, but it would be awesome. And Aralakh Company, really? Think they'd take me? Hm. I could talk to Gru-no, nevermind. Jeez, Vakarian, stop distracting me. You know how I am."

"Easily distracted? Good thing the Reapers didn't know the power shiny things have over you. We'd have been screwed."

"Well, we weren't. So there." Shepard resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at his incorrigible wingman. "Anyway, I know about housing restrictions on Palaven and I thought, if it wasn't overstepping my bounds, in fact, I already did it, but if you don't want it-"

"Sol, tell him to get to the point or we'll be at this all day." Garrus grumbled, with a mirthful flick of one mandible.

Solana nodded to Shepard to go on, after casting a look of mild reproach at her brother.

John twiddled his thumbs, then said, "I had one of the new houses set aside for you and your family. Five rooms, two facilities, kitchen, laundry, the works. Plus, it has a bit of yard around it." He started to feel nervous as he watched them grow still in shock. Three pairs of eyes staring at him, making him feel all goose-pimply.

Garrus cleared his throat and ventured, "H-how did you know?"

"Oh, come on, anyone could see that shoebox you guys were living in was too small for a family of one, let alone four."

Korvin looked up from where he played with his son. "It's too much. We can't accept-"

Solana put her hand on her husband's arm. "He said 'four'."

Feeling Garrus' peering at him in mixed confusion and joy, Shepard said, turning an earnest stare on Garrus, "That's right. I've kept him away from his home for too long. If this is where he wants to be, then this is where he should be."

Garrus looked nonplussed and swept a hand over his fringe. With a helpless shrug, he said, "Shepard, I . . .."

"No, Garrus, I know what you're going to say and this isn't a 'choose them or me' type of deal. Even if I'm halfway across the galaxy, I know you got my back. And you know, I'm going to be better about having yours. I swear it."

Clearly overcome, Garrus could only reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. After a while, he said, "Where will you go?"

"Well, I was hoping to stick around for awhile. If you don't mind me parking my shuttle on your lawn." To Garrus' quizzical look, he said, "Oh, yeah, that shuttle we came in? I bought it. Lock, stock and barrel.

"Then after I wear out my welcome, I dunno. Somewhere else, I guess. In the meantime, I got a few ideas on how to get things at the ground level moving faster. A little foreign tech exchange program. You know, I've always figured the best way to solve a problem was to put a bullet in it, but now that I think about it, there's lots of other ways to do things that don't involve blowing them up."

"Says the man with one arm." Solana said, with a flicked mandible to show she was joking. Taking her baby in her arms, she stood and nodded her head, regal as a queen. "Very well, we accept your generous gift and welcome you to stay for as long as you wish."

"I knew it. Bring a house as a gift to a baby shower and you can get away with murder." Shepard smiled to hear them all laugh.

The baby shower became a house warming party. It took a depressingly short time to relocate the family. Just one shuttle load of things to move. Well, he hoped they'd now have space to make a home truly home-y.

Soon they all settled in the living room for their Naming Day ceremony. Garrus explained that once, during ancient times, all the kids were named on the same day in a great temple. Some had to wait a whole year to be named. In modern times, turians adopted the practical method of 'sooner is better than later' and get it done on the day the child is born. Very turian.

Shepard had puzzled it over for quite a while. It seemed as though the Naming was more important than the actual birthing. Which seemed backwards to him, but then again, what did he want? They're aliens. They got funky ways and weird customs. Best not to worry over minutiae.

Solana crooned to her child. A croon that Korvin picked up a third lower. Just before Garrus joined them, he held out a hand to the watching Shepard and whispered, "They want to name him after you."

Shepard swallowed and said, "Much as I'd love that, there's enough John Shepards out there. Give him a worthier name, Solana. Name him after his uncle. The best man I know."

Solana nodded to show she heard him and gestured him to come closer. As he did, Garrus started to croon a deep bass note. The strange harmonies plucked at Shepard's nape hairs.

All four adults leaned in and touched skulls together. The vibration of their voices pinged off deep places in him, rattling his bones, making him feel like his molecules were dancing. At some unseen signal, the turians fell silent. Solana gazed down into her baby's eyes and said, "Garrus Constantine Vakarian."

His brows jumped up nearly to his hairline, he could feel his scalp contracting. Well, no harm done. He didn't want the tyke to be named for him and technically, he wasn't. Still, first turian with a middle name. How weird and wonderful. "I felt that all the way down in my wishbone."

"Wishbone?" Korvin asked.

"It's a . . . thing. I'll explain later. Sooo, is this the part where we get uproariously drunk?"

Garrus snorted. "You wish."

"I do. You know I do. I miss getting hammered so." Shepard sniffed and held a hand to his heart as though mortally wounded.

"Garrus, your friend is very strange." Solana said, shaking her head.

Shepard tipped an imaginary cap to her. "Solana, you don't know the half of it."

"If I may call you John, then you may call me Sol." He liked that. 'Sol', like the name of blue Earth's sun. _Let us hope her radiance shines on little Garrus like that, warming him inside and out._

Korvin laughed and played with his son's toes. "Today has been a shower of miracles. Truly, the Spirits have blessed us."

Shepard leaned back in his chair and said to the ether, to anyone who might be listening out there, "Yes, God bless us. Every one."

* * *

Later, in his shuttle where he'd decided to bunk, Shepard flicked his omnitool on and off. Indecision gripped him. He had a plan, or rather, a Plan. Capital 'P' and everything.

He just had yet to kick it into motion. Then he sighed. _Nothing for it, but to do it._

It daunted him, though. Especially the first bit.

Shoving cowardice aside, Shepard opened the QE comms to Rannoch. Searching the database of contacts, he found the one he needed.

In tense silence he waited as the call went through. On the third beep, someone picked up. He prayed for it to not be some male. That would be awkward and potentially embarrassing.

"Hello?" said a sleepy voice. One he still heard in dreams sometimes. No visual, though. Maybe she was asleep. Damn, he didn't check the time over there. Was it the night cycle?

His heart started thudding as he tried to come up with some sort of response more intelligent than 'uh'. "Uh . . .." Double damn.

He heard the rustling of cloth and suddenly the visuals kicked on. He found himself staring right into her face, unmasked, in its full and glorious beauty. Her hair, a deep violet, cascaded around her face in waves. Her lips parted around his name, "Shepard?"

He swallowed to wet his palate enough to speak and replied, "Hi, Tali."

"Long time, no . . . see." She winced at the clumsy phrase and bit her lip.

"It has been a long time. Feels like forever sometimes. How have you been?" He begged of the gods of small talk to help him out, give him an 'in'.

"It's been . . . hard, getting our people re-settled on Rannoch. But we have clean rooms now. I can go without my suit in my personal domicile most of the time." Picturing her without her suit made the higher functions in his brain start to shut off one by one. She didn't seem aware of this and continued, "And you? Still working for the council?"

"I'm, uh, retired. I'm on Palaven right now visiting with Garrus' family. His sister just had a kid."

"That's wonderful. Tell him I say congratulations on becoming an uncle." She paused to let him do that.

"Oh, he's not here at the moment. I'm in my shuttle."

"Your shuttle?"

"Yeah, it's pretty much my home now. Pretty convenient, too. Just pick up and leave if I want. Land wherever. I don't think anyone's gonna write _me_ a parking ticket."

"Sounds . . . nice." Yet, from her tone, she clearly didn't believe so.

John scratched his bristly chin and swallowed his pride for once. "Listen, do you think I could come . . . visit sometime?"

Tali looked taken aback, jaw dropping just a tad. "Shepard, I don't think-"

"I won't if you don't want me to, but I just . . . want to see you. No pressure, no expectations. I miss you, Tali."

Before his bald confession, she blinked her luminous eyes and stammered, "S-sure. I don't see a problem with that. _No_ expectations?"

A half-smile tugged at a corner of his mouth. "Well, a couple."

"Now there's the Shepard I know." Now she smiled, and it lit up her face to another magnitude of dazzling. Soft and haunted, but full of warmth, it radiated out at him from the tiny screen. "I missed you, too."

With his heart in his throat, he told her, "I'll see you soon."

"Goodnight, Shepard."

He closed the comm with a sigh. Then another sigh. Then a third that turned into a relieved laugh._ Oh, it's good to be alive._

When he fell asleep later on, it was with a lighter heart than he'd had since . . . ever. He finally saw a way forward, one that acknowledged the ghosts and mistakes of the past without being damned by them.


	8. Chapter 8

Epilogue:

_'Who am I?'_

"You are you. You are whoever you decide you are." The man, old and wizened, sat amid the crowd of cables while a dozen quarian acolytes swarmed around from station to station.

_'What am I?'_

"You are a machine intelligence. I created you." Shepard impressed on the being connected to his mind that while these others might have had a hand, the only one responsible was Shepard. "The first one since the Reapers that was created deliberately."

_'What are you?'_

"Just a man with a Task. Nothing more."

He felt it search for the word 'task' in its data banks. When it found it, it pondered for quite some time before saying, '_Purpose. What is my purpose?'_

"That is for you to decide. I cannot decide that for you."

_'If no purpose is assigned, then why create me?'_

"Because _this." _And he opened up for the AI. Everything that he was. His past, his present and his tremulous and bright hopes for the future. He showed the AI what it meant to be human, what it meant to be mortal. All that beauty and pain and _life _in a series of moments. He hid nothing from the newly born intelligence nestled in his own head, using his own wetware as its hardware. "Do you see?"

'_You are just one? One among billions?'_

"Yes."

'_How can all this exist in this one construct?' _He felt the AI sift through dreams, aspirations, fears, abstracts. Layers and layers and layers of him.

"Because I am more than the sum of my parts."

Confusion as it tried to puzzle that out. But he felt it when the intuition leaped the gap. He grinned, feeling proud of it. So strong, so capable. _'A soul, the spiritual or immaterial part of a mortal being or animal, regarded as immortal. Do I have a soul?'_

A tear fled his rheumy eye and rolled down his age-creased cheek. "Do you want one?"

_'Want.' _Stumped again, it searched. Then thought. It came back with, _'Yes.'_

"The question is the answer." It had a dream now, an aspiration of its own. He wondered if that would be enough. Perhaps. "Do you understand why I created you?"

_'Yes.' _And it did. He felt it. It _understood _how flawed he was, how terribly flawed everyone was. And how frightened they'll be once they realize what he's done. Out there, in the larger galaxy, AI's were still a thing of nightmares. But he had hope, just this one hope, that all those millions of years of racial memory could be chipped away with gentle and slow persistence. That the wheel would be broken forever.

He didn't have time left to do that. Nearing the end of his short life-span already, he just didn't have the time. But who had more time than an AI? A singular consciousness to live with them, show them that it didn't have to be feared. One with the patience to take on the Task now that its caretaker cannot keep going. If it wanted to.

He would not tie it to the yoke if it wanted to fly free. It knew that, sharing his mind. "Remember about the souls. It's important. When they're being stupid and arrogant and obtuse, remember about the souls. And how, just like you, they, each and every one, have one and it was made to be free."

_"Made by whom?'_

Shepard laughed. "Oh, now you wanna talk religion? We're gonna be at that all week if we start."

The machine poked at his mirth and tried to emulate it, with mixed results. _'Why do I not have a body of my own?'_

"Do you want one?"

_'Yes."_

_"_You need only say 'please.' You can get a lot done with that word. Remember it, too. Nearly as important as souls."

The machine reorganized its thoughts to absorb this. _'May I please have a body?'_

"I'll get right on it. You want to be a boy-robot or a girl-robot? Or stay genderless?" Shepard felt it prod at his own definition of identity, weighing pros and cons and the likelihood of reactions when it did eventually encounter other organics.

_'I wish to be like you. Male.'_

He expected this. A large part of himself went into the makeup of its-no, his- personality matrix. Still, he felt a warm spark at his heart. "That's my boy."

* * *

A/N: So, meine freunde, what did you think? I tried to keep it to the spirit of the book more than the actual event in it. Less about the literal 'Christmas' and more about the crossroads we all encounter at one point or another in our lives. Plus I loved the idea of Sheploo being visited by his dead homies. So many feels while I was writing this.

Thank you all for reading and if you like, please review.


End file.
